Ben Stiller’s Wildest Comedy Is Streaming For Free Right Now
There's Something About Mary, the hit 1998 comedy starring Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz, is now available to stream on Freevee.
Ben Stiller’s 1998 classic comedy film There’s Something About Mary is available to stream on Freevee, according to JustWatch. The rated R film stars Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz, and was directed by comedy legends Bobby and Peter Farrelly. The film inspired a generation of comedy writers, garnered critical and audience praise, and features a soundtrack that will never, ever get out of your head.
The film follows Ben Stiller’s Ted, as he pines after his high school crush, Mary Jensen, played hilariously by Cameron Diaz, years after they had lost contact with one another in adulthood. After employing the help of a private investigator to reach out to Mary, a chain of events causes several of Mary’s male suitors to go to great lengths to undermine and destroy each other, all trying to sneakily become romantically involved with her through deception and backstabbing. The film is both a hilarious romantic comedy and a powerful meditation on the deeply strange and scary behaviors of men in the dating pool.
Ben Stiller would go on to master the role of quirky, well-meaning, awkward weirdo in a rom com in subsequent films such as Meet The Parents and The Heartbreak Kid, making him one of the all time comedy greats in this field. He would also go on to become a legendary comedic performer and director, producing such classics as Zoolander, Tropic Thunder, and the Apple TV+ series Severance starring Adam Scott. Stiller’s first directorial feature, 1996’s Cable Guy, has become a cult classic in its own right with the benefit of hindsight, but initially bombed at the box office.
The Farrelly brothers may not be a household name such as the Coen brothers or the Russo brothers, but chances are very high you’ve seen some of their films in the past two decades. Before directing There’s Something About Mary the Farrelly’s wrote and directed the 1994 classic Jim Carrey comedy Dumb and Dumber, before moving on to direct such classics as Osmosis Jones, Hall Pass, and the 2018 academy award winner for best picture, Green Book. They reunited with Ben Stiller to write and direct 2007’s The Heartbreak Kid, which many fans consider to be a spiritual successor to There’s Something About Mary.
Following the box office failure of 1996’s Kingpin, the Farrelly brothers assumed their careers would never recover, and opted to create the most balls to the walls whacked out black comedy they could come up with, resulting in There’s Something About Mary. The studio was initially hesitant to let Ben Stiller star in the film, nearly forcing the directors to recast the role until the last possible minute. Needless to say, the desperation and lack of a filter provided for a classic comedy experience which still leaves viewers cracking up nearly 30 years later.
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert each gave the film glowing reviews, citing the comedy as some of the best they’d seen. Cameron Diaz’s breakout performance won a host of awards including best actress, best performance, and a nomination for a Golden Globe. Ben Stiller and the Farrelly brothers each went on to craft a series of incredible comedy films before pivoting to more serious dramatic projects in recent years, displaying the stern existence of the Something About Mary to auteur filmmaker pipeline.
