20 2000s Movies That Could Never Be Made Today
11. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007)
Buddy comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry takes us to a New York fire station, where firefighters Chuck Levine and Larry Valentine (Adam Sandler and Kevin James) pretend to be gay and get hitched in Canada so widower Larry can provide life insurance for his children.
On the surface, this is a noble, feel-good premise, but given this film was directed by Dennis Dugan – who brought us You Don't Mess with the Zohan, and Jack and Jill – and was released in 2007, some eight years before the 50 states got same-sex marriage, it is, umm, not.
Chuck & Larry features a disastrous portrayal of the LGBT community, riddled with offensive cliches and stereotypes. Needless to say, it has its fair share of homophobia, deemed a necessary element to sell the mismatch between burly, manly, all-American firefighters and *gasp* homosexuals. It also has non-consensual sexual touching, and Rob Schneider doing yellowface, as marriage administrator Morris Takechi, for absolutely no reason. And it’s a comedy, so all this is played for laughs.
Well, few audiences would be laughing today, and certainly none to the tune of an $187 million box office – and the producers and execs in charge of greenlighting films know this only too well.