The original Heartbreak Kid was a rebutal to The Graduate, which ended on an ambigous note. Writers at the time used to speculate how Ben and Elaine turned out. Then the film Easy Rider was rebutted with Electroglide in Blue. Every important film generates an antithesis. Was Mandingo the antithesis of Gone With the Wind? Probably not. Should remakes of Rebutal films be allowed? Only if they are trashy and cheap, like the knockoff Spaghetti Westerns that followed Sergio Leone. Sorry this film might actually be too good to mention, Stephanie.

The original "Heartbreak Kid" was about a Jewish man who rejected his Jewish bride in favor of a blonde, goyishe Goddess. The Jewish director, Elaine May, cast her daughter to embody the undesirable JAP. It was a wince inducing meditation on self hatred and its consequences. I don't think either Friedman or Simon realized how revealatory it was. It stunk then and I can't imagine wanting to unearth it now.

Right, because any time a Jewish guy outmarries, it must be because of 'self-hatred'. Seriously, people like you and David Sugarman need to take this little nationalistic eugenics-tinged obsession of yours back to the 19th century where it belongs and shove it.

It's too bad that the Farrelly brothers have made this disaster. They are fine filmmakers, but I guess once in a while, everyone lays a rotten egg.

Ben Stiller is a great actor, so it's a disappointment that he didn't have a good script to act from. Everything can't be like "There's Something About Mary".

The original was a dark comedy about Jewish self-hatred, and envy of wasp culture. Guy marries a borsch-belt type girl--his female equivalent, and sees his whole life--a career in wholesale clothes, summers in the Catskills, or something like that--spread out before him. On his honeymoon, he meets the goy goddess, and decides this is what he really wants. He dumps his wife, and goes overboard wooing the wasp. In the end, he gets her. The ironic moment, is the end of the movie, at (or directly after), his marriage to the wasp, when he realizes he was just as stuck as he'd been before. It is a deeply ironic movie. To strip all this out, is to strip the essence of the movie out. Though they couldn't leave it in, because if the movie were made as it was, in this day and age, it would be called out as deeply anti-semetic (not to mention that these issues are no longer particularly relevent. Wasp envy has gone the way of black and white tv.) So all that is left is a shallow comedy, based on sight gags and mild misongyny. Don't see what the point is. They'd been better off writing something new.

but I recall even then feeling uncomfortable at how he treated his new wife, even if she was sort of sloppy and (horrors!!) used the toilet before coming to bed.

The previews show this version of the wife actually passing wind and then apologizing. OMG, yeah, get rid of her before she actually reveals she's NOT a robot from Venus and instead a real human being with, you know, bowels and stuff.

It reminds me of a story I read about a man who recoiled in terror that his new wife had pubic hair.

I was too young to understand the original story had anything to do with being Jewish (which I am) but I was old enough to understand the cruel misogyny and self-delusion.

And no, idiot above me, marrying outside the religion doesn't make a Jew self-hating. But thinking the blond shiksa is the ultimate prize and the woman who mirrors your own Jewishness is a dud, does. This has nothing to do with eugenics.

As I recall it, the groom is sitting alone, removed from all the "action" surrounding the bride (Isn't that the way it is at all weddings, about 2 hours into the reception?), pondering his new fate...and he makes eye contact with one of the bridesmaids...fade out...VERY disturbing!

The only Farrelly brothers movie that I enjoyed was "Osmosis Jones."

But like Adam Sandler, they just keep giving him money to make crap.

This movie did not need to be redone. The original is truly funny and disturbing enough for today’s audience. Although I am a huge fan of Neil Simon, I didn’t really enjoy the movie, the main character is a really big jerk, and the blonde he falls for is….uhh blonde and 18. The wife is the only semi likeable character… she is a good natured, kind of plain Jewish girl with a few annoying habits (I think the point is that everyone has little quirks and silly habits…to me she represents the average middle class American girl and the heartbreak comes from her being dumped on her honeymoon for a goddess…every young woman’s worst fear…right?) Neil Simon does not need to be rewritten by a “Volkswagen” full of writers, he wrote some of the best comedy’s of the twentieth century and in that gave a far greater gift to our culture than the Farrelly brothers ever will.

Characteristically superb work by La Zacharek, whose low opinion of Stiller I have shared since my first exposure to him. Not funny, he. Not engaging. Not anything at all. A cipher. The Keanu Reeves of comedy. I just don't understand the world we live in. I just don't.

Ben Stiller was amusing in his comedy show that was broadcast on Fox-TV, and I am beginning to think that was only because of everybody else that was on the show. Credited writers include Judd Apatow, David Cross and Bob Odenkirk.

And don't get the Jerry Stiller love either. He just screams all the time. Not funny.

Stiller is really not a funny guy, he always appears pressed and at ease. He's only be funny/appealing in 2 movies: Dodgeball and Night at the Museum.

I absolutely now HAVE to see this movie.

It is brave of the Farrelly Brothers to tackle the uber slut phenomenon by picking at it in a comedy. But I can understand why any woman who has irresponsibly had too many sexual partners would have an issue with this important film.

I mean, c'mon. Why would any decent guy WANT to date or marry a woman who has had so many sexual stud playas already, all you can do is bore her, who has tried or been addicted to every drug in the universe, who is so self centered that she thinks nothing of singing off key loudly and endlessly without even considering who around her might be annoyed, who is so selfish that your advice to her is ignored even if it means she gets sunburned trying to prove who wears the pants.

Send these women to the reject bin. Most men understand this intuitively. Feminism was designed to thwart this natural Darwinian process of rejection.

Nice to see it all being made fun of, particuarly and exactly because women hate to see themselves ever criticized. Good times.

Glad to see some sort of morality is returning to film.