I fear that die-hards are going go out into the night looking to make up for lack of fluid spilled here: Blame the screenwriters, dude’s moms, Deleuze or whatever, but the Farrellies have spitshone their vomit-encrusted hearts, warmly declaring that love isn’t all about the stuff that comes out of your body.

And surprise, it isn’t quite the gentrified bib-on-a-hog you’d expect. For sure, we mourn the giggling-during-sex-ed sensibility, but it’s almost made up for by an adequate willingness to keep character contours in tow. The brown-bag is basically boy-meets-girl-meets-boy’s-pop-cultural-obsession, and when that red-capped elephant arrives bearing its shit-eating grin, it’s incredibly relieving that boy isn’t turned into a convention-humping freak: your mileage may vary on “funny” and “charming,” but fact of the matter is he can still pull Drew. And to that degree, this feels like a semi-conscious response to all those relationship films that smother themselves in a lovers’ embrace: Rather than cropping/demonizing the outside world (in order to pump up the tragedy factor), The Perfect Catch reintroduces it as a kind of third wheel, forcing the couple to achieve triangulation. I speak too soon, because in the end 180˚ means realizing that everything comes back to the Freudian security blanket of arrested development. But that’s okay – as the film’s in-built defense system would have it, we’re hypocrites for wanting perfection anyway.—David Levinson

» Bobby & Peter Farrelly | USA | 2005