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Run, Fat Boy, Run

Simon Pegg, Thandie Newton, Hank Azaria

Next year I am running with the bulls in Spain. I would like to blame the ten or twelve shots of liquid courage that were pumping through my system when one of my friends suggested it to me. I know that they were somehow involved when I started flapping my arms and squawking “chick, chick, chicken” to my other friends who know crazy when they hear it. There is no backing out when you have implied that your smart friends have the backbone of a Democratic Presidential candidate. Now, if you don’t know what the running with the bulls is, it is kind of like reverse hunting, like training a deer to use a high-powered rifle. It is a chance for the animals to get their revenge against humanity. While PETA is against the event, to me it seems like the animal kingdom’s chance to balance the scales a little. Thousands of men dress in white shirts and pants with a red scarf and cap, because nothing says “don’t notice me” more than a solid field of white. Plus, that color allows the crowd to see the blood so much better when a bull gores someone. So, thousands of crazy, testosterone-filled psychopaths, dressed like gay busboys, press together into these narrow streets like a swinger’s club. Into this sea of stupid humanity are introduced hundreds of terrified, charging half-ton well-muscled bovine killing machines with really pissed-off attitudes and really sharp horns. In turn, the streets are always more littered with more wrecked bodies than the road to Baghdad during Desert Storm. In the sober light of the next morning, I was able to put myself in the cold light of reality, to put myself in the place of a bull. I would be running with my friends who are two boney-assed, skinny marathon runners. Now if I was a bull barreling down the street and I come up behind three incredibly stupid Americans, two thin, lighting-fast gentlemen and a slow, fat gentleman with a bad back, no common sense, and a lot of padding on the backside, Where am I going to stick the horns? Would I go after the two gentlemen who are swift as gazelles or the chunky guy limping away whose butt looks like a drive-in movie screen that has been split in half? Translation: I have a year-and-a-half to get myself in shape or there will be a bull making a fashion statement to his friends, wearing my backside as a hat. So, run, fat boy, run.

So, while I wait for the runner’s high to hit instead of my runner’s cough, wheeze, gasp, curse, and crying, I could not resist a movie called Run, Fat Boy, Run, especially when I discovered that it stars England’s Simon Pegg who was hilarious in Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, and the television show “Spaced.” I grew even more excited when I found that the little known Irish comedian Dylan Moran and “The Simpsons’” Hank Azaria, both underrated geniuses, filled out the cast. Then I read two names that made me want to run away screaming, like nuns from a wet t-shirt contest – Thandie Newton and David Schwimmer, Ross from “Friends” and a skinny black chick whose wooden acting has never met a bad movie she could not make worse. Thandie Newton has made a career of being an acting black hole in such cinematic abortions like Norbit, The Truth About Charlie, and The Chronicles of Riddick. Schwimmer, who like the rest of the “Friends” cast, has discovered that audiences are not willing to pay hard earned money to see talent-less, white people with the charisma of a Pat Boone Christmas special, when they can watch Mitt Romney run for President for free has moved behind the camera as a director. I apologize to “Friends” fans for your taste, but that show stunk. With thoughts of a 90 minute episode of “Friends” flowing through my head like an overflowing septic tank, I did not exactly run to the theater.

Now you would think with a name like Run, Fat Boy, Run that Simon Pegg would have either done a Robert-DeNiro-like method acting of putting on 30 or 40 pounds or he would be wearing a fat suit and latex, but as his character Dennis admits, “I’m not fat. I’m just not fit.” Translation: Even though fat guys have always ruled the comedy roost from Fatty Arbuckle to John Belushi, beautiful Hollywood is not willing to give an unknown comedian like John Pinette or Artie Lange a chance to star in a low budget film that is supposed to be about a fat dude who decides to run a marathon. Instead because Pegg has the hot hand as of late, he got the call. (The movie was originally set in New York and was pitched to Adam Sandler.) Pegg’s character is instead a pale, chain smoking slacker who lives in a basement flat and works as a night security guard in a woman’s underwear shop. Still, Run, Pale Chain Smoker, Run is not nearly as funny as Run, Fat Boy, Run, so they kept the title. Five years earlier, Dennis left his pregnant girlfriend Libby (Newton) at the altar. He is a good dad to his son Jake (Matthew Fenton) and still has feelings for Libby, but she, of course, still has some anger towards him. Libby has a new beau in her life, a rich American named Whit (Azaria), who is an avid jogger. In a moment of stupidity, when told that he has never finished anything in his life, filled with idiocy and pride, Dennis informs his former girlfriend that he is going to run the London Marathon along with Whit. In many ways this race is a chance for Dennis to win back Libby’s love. Signing up to help him train are his best friend Gordon (Dylan Moran), who has bet everything he has that Dennis can finish the 26 miles, and his landlord Mr. Ghoshdashtidar (Harish Patel), the two best characters in the movie. Will Dennis finish the race? Will he win back Libby’s love? Will she realize that the seemingly nice Whit is really a louse? How much money did Nike pay for product placement to get on my nerves by the end of this film?

This is a truly paint by the numbers comedy with the only bright spots coming from Pegg and Moran. By setting this mediocre masculine underdog light romance in London, Schwimmer and the producers invite comparisons to the master of understanding the male psyche, author Nick Hornsby. A writer like Hornsby would have understood the central metaphor of the film, that we as human beings spend most of our lives running, especially men. We run from emotions, run from the women we love, run from responsibility and problems, run from those we love, run and run some more from things that are a lot more scary than a few bulls and develop it on a deeper level than Schwimmer and company have. The best comedies are able to get to the core of what it means to be human, tilt it slightly, and show us the humor in being human. This movie never quite gets there. It is good, but not great. There are a several really clever gags and lines that Pegg and Moran clearly wrote or did off the cuff, but it’s mostly sitcom material. There is a reason its American release was sloughed off until 2008 when the rest of the world sat through this film last year. Schwimmer, like the rest of the “Friends” cast, seems destined to be doing a “Where Are They Now” episode in a few years. Thandie Newton is destined to have about five years left in the tank before she is sitting in a bar somewhere with a lot of other boney middle-aged actresses wondering why the phone does not ring any more. Moran and Pegg are destined to recover because they are too talented to make mediocre films. I just hope some bull in Spain is not destined to be wearing my backside for a hat.

Verdict: Basically a Mediocre Episode of Friends

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