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For more movie summaries, see Kam's Kapsules.

Stuck on You: Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear Pair for Siamese Twin Silliness

What does it say about this year's crop of films when it's the height of Oscar-hype season and the best offering of a perennial hopeful like Meryl Streep (nominated 13 times) is a teensploit like Stuck on You? Was it really just a year ago that she was in such a critically-acclaimed picture as The Hours? The outlook is bleak this year, despite the cast being stocked with Oscar-winners Cher (Moonstruck) and Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting) and a trio of ex-nominees in Greg Kinnear (As Good As It Gets), Seymour Cassel (Faces), and Griffin Dunne (Duke of Groove)?

Stuck on You comes courtesy of the Farrelly Brothers, Bobby and Peter, collaborators on a base brand of comedy which has netted the pair well in excess of a billion dollars at the box office. This writing/directing team has produced such lowbrow hits as Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary; Me, Myself & Irene; and Shallow Hal. And they are currently at work on a remake of The Three Stooges.

The primary problem with Stuck on You is that the bulk of its mean-spirited mirth comes at the expense of Bo and Walt Tenor, conjoined brothers comically portrayed by Damon and Kinnear, respectively. If you've seen the ubiquitous TV commercial, then you have a very good idea of what to expect. The movie is a one-trick pony which hammers you over the head with the idea that Siamese twins are hilarious via a string of vignettes, all variations on the same joke. Ever the butt of the joke, the two go trick-or-treating, play baseball and football, box, date, bathe, and even appear in a porno flick called Pavlov's Dong. Although the boys are awfully good sports about a world which treats them like freaks, they eventually opt to be separated. World-renowned surgeon Dr. Ben Carson makes a quickie cameo to perform the delicate operation, setting up a classic second-thoughts scenario in which our heroes experience overwhelming regret. When not overindulging in birth defect humor, Stuck on You divides its attention between its two distracting sub-themes: degrading females and prominent product placements.

Women might take offense whenever crossword buff Bo asks his brother for help on a clue, because the answer's invariably profane. Brace yourself for an avalanche of advertising for Budweiser, Double Bubble bubble gum, Capitol Records, Michelob, American Airlines, Variety Magazine, and 20th Century Fox, among others.

I didn't buy Stuck on You's supposedly uplifting ending, intended to undo all the damage done by the earlier displays of intolerance. The subject of Siamese twins was far more sensitively handled in Twin Falls Idaho, a highly-recommended drama available as a video rental. The movie isn't saved by the brief appearance of Jay Leno and Frankie Muniz or by the first pairing of Streep and Cher since their Oscar-quality work a score of years ago in Silkwood.

Fair (1star). Rated PG-13 for profanity and for crude and off-color humor.

end of review.