TESTING TASTE OF LAUGHTER
By Jonathan Foreman
TOMCATS ()
Raunchy, exuberantly juvenile low comedy. Running Time: 95 minutes. Rated R (obscene language). The 42d Street E Walk, the Lincoln Square, the Kips Bay, others.
GROSS-OUT comedies aimed at the juvenile horn-dog market don't get much more puerile or disgusting than "Tomcats," but that's not to say it isn't funny.
Much of "Tomcats" is actually boisterously, crudely entertaining; though to enjoy all of it, you have to be capable of finding yuks in stuff like anal rape and orchiectomy (that's having a cancerous testicle surgically removed . . .).
Fortunately, writer-director Gregory Poirier has the courage of his convictions: he's not afraid to repeat a joke, or to take a loopy sight gag – a man desperately chasing a bouncing, rubbery piece of medical waste all around a hospital – and make it gruesomely funny.
You meet the group of young guys who call themselves "the Tomcats" at a wedding. In the boozy aftermath of the party, they make a group wager: Whoever is the last to marry will win a large kitty.
At another Tomcat wedding seven years later, this one in Las Vegas, Michael (Jerry O'Connell) is one of the last two bachelors. That night, he foolishly provokes his girlfriend to break up with him and, in an attempt to drown his sorrows at the gaming tables, the struggling cartoonist loses $51,000 that he doesn't have.
Casino boss Carlos (Bill Maher) gives Michael a month to pay off his tab or face a painful death. Michael realizes that the only way he can get the money is if the other bachelor, Kyle (Jake Busey), gets married within the month. (The bachelor pot is now worth half a million dollars.) The problem is that Kyle is a pathologically unromantic scam artist.
However, years ago, there was a girl that Kyle came close to loving. So Michael tracks her down. Natalie (Shannon Elizabeth) turns out to be a tough cop who nabs johns cruising for hookers on Hollywood boulevard. But she agrees to seduce Kyle into marriage for half the wager money.
Things go surprisingly well. But just as Kyle and Natalie get engaged, Michael realizes that he really, really likes Natalie . . .
O'Connell ("Scream 2" and TV's "Sliders") makes a charming comic hero. He proves to be especially adept at conveying physical fear – his character is always breaking down and begging for mercy from a Mafioso or a dominatrix librarian.
Unfortunately, Elizabeth, the babe from "American Pie," is so lamely unconvincing as a cop, it spoils most of her scenes.
One interesting thing about this energetic gross romp is its strange gender politics: The guys are conventional only in their vulgarity and ignorance of women. They possess no traditional masculine virtues. The women, on the other hand, are physically and emotionally intimidating.
MARRIOTT OF DANCE