The Farrelly brothers burst onto the cultural scene with last year's There's Something About Mary, a romantic comedy where the romance was sweet but the comedy was tart. With jokes about masturbation and pieces of anatomy caught in zippers, they pushed the envelope of what was acceptable in a mainstream movie. So when Hollywood found a Farrelly-penned script centered around the teen set, expectations were high for a raucous, rude and rewarding (financially) mess.
Outside Providence certainly starts off that way. Our first image is of a van dragging a boy in a wheelchair followed by a three-legged dog with an eye patch. A minute later, our hero, 17-year-old Timothy "Dunph" Dunphy, tells the audience, "Dildo. That's what my old man called me." Talk about lowest-common denominator humor. Strangely after that, the movie doesn't go for the easy laughs very often, or any laughs for that matter. Rather, director Michael Corrente gives us a simple tale of a Rhode Island outsider trying to find his place in the world.
Dunphy (Shawn Hatosy, In and Out and The Faculty) is getting ready for his senior year in high school when a traffic accident and drug use send him to a tony prep school in Cornwall, Connecticut. The stupid school traditions and ornery dorm master threaten to make his life a living hell until he finds some common souls (pot smokers, all) and an incredibly attractive girl, Jane (played by Amy Smart, Varsity Blues). This being Hollywood, Jane is not only angelically beautiful but the "coolest chick in school" and smart enough to get into Brown University. And despite Dunph's crooked teeth, coarse manners, and general stupidity, all he has to do to snag her is slip a little rum into her Coke. If only courting were that easy.
And only in a teen movie like Outside Providence do we have not one or two but five ridiculous montage sequences, all set to a soundtrack of predictable if enjoyable hits from the '70s. The first sequence tracks the couple's courtship, the second reveals Dunph reflecting on childhood memories of his mother (who died early in his life), the third shows him finally getting the hang of school (twelve years of intellectual mediocrity reversed by three months of prep school uniforms and the love of an intelligent girl), the fourth shows our couple on Spring Break, and finally there's the obligatory memory sequence after she leaves him. Next to this, the montages of Scooby Doo seem positively reasonable.
The editing is particularly unfortunate, because the cinematography (by Richard Crudo, American Pie) and direction are pretty good. The heavy use of faded greens, browns, and blues reflects the setting as well as contributes to the muted tone of the film. There are some comic scenes, including the now common-place masturbation jokes, but the movie is mostly a subdued, if naive, look at a young man finding out who he is. There's even a subtle comparison between middle-aged men and the kids who are following in their footsteps. Early on in the movie, five teenage boys walk in on five older men playing poker. As the groups awkwardly and humorously interact (a dropped bong is mistaken for a musical instrument), the audience can't help but wonder what the men were like in their teens and what the teens will be like in 20 years.
One of the poker players is Alec Baldwin, who plays Dunph's father, and he's easily the best part of the movie. His working-class joe, trying to raise two boys without a mother, captures the early '70s ethos perfectly--when gender roles were starting to change, and being a 'man' wasn't as simple as it had been just a few years earlier. There's a great scene in the middle of the movie, where Baldwin's character teaches Dunph how to tie a tie. The wished-for but uncomfortable intimacy is a perfect reflection of a typical father-son relationship.
I wish the film would've focused on that relationship, but instead Corrente gives us a whole series of miniature conflicts that distract us from the story rather than lead us through it. By the end of the movie, the audience doesn't care about Dunph's druggie friends because we've spent so little time with them. Therefore, when one of them dies in a car accident, the funeral seems incidental and out of place. That's true for a lot of the hot-button issues the movie raises: death, suicide, cheating, disabilities, class. All of them are handled with kid's gloves, as if the target audience couldn't deal with anything difficult but would appreciate the superficial gravity these important themes convey.
The main problem with Outside Providence is that it has the sophistication and outlook of an after-school special, but the constant and accepting portrayal of drug use makes it completely inappropriate for that age. So the audience who might appreciate the protagonist's struggles and victory can't (and shouldn't) get in to see it, while the audience who could get in won't identify with Dunphy or his problem-free love affair.And those hoping for the gross-out humor of Mary or Dumb and Dumber (another Farrelly flick) will go home with little satisfaction.
J. Robert Parks 9/1/99
