Just as there are some diseases that are worse than dysentery, there are some films that are worse than Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. But we're talking single figures, folks. In a pointless sequel to 1999's scrappy sex comedy Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Rob Schneider's reluctant prostitute flees to Amsterdam after an incident involving a group of pensioners and a dolphin. There, he and his pimp (Eddie Griffin) are embroiled in a plot to catch a serial killer specialising in "man-whores".
Director Mike Bigelow (how they must have laughed at that one) uses this flimsy framework as an excuse to set Schneider up with as many deformed and/or disabled women as possible, from a smoker with a laryngectomy who squirts wine through the hole in her windpipe, to a Russian aristocrat with a penis for a nose. Yeah, you read that right. Guess what happens when she sneezes.
"ENTIRELY GIGGLE-FREE"
But it's not the relentless misogyny, the homophobia or even the persistent undercurrent of racism that makes Deuce Bigalow such a miserable, joyless grind to sit through. Its predecessor somehow mined a few laughs from its college frat-boy scenarios, but this effort is entirely giggle-free. It can't even raise a laugh at the idea of a national union of male prostitutes, a concept that ought to be very funny indeed. Schneider remains as goggle-eyed and charmless as ever, but his character's relative innocence is the only foothold in a fetid swamp of cynicism that engulfs everything around him. Moronic and repulsive.