Nope. No irony intended at all. He squints and says “ling” instead of “ring.” That’s the joke. At least Mickey Rooney had the fig leaf excuse of having done his caricature in less enlightened era.
Incidentally, Schneider’s performance doesn’t stop at just being an Asian minstrel show, he’s also a stereotypical, masochistic homosexual. He’s only in a couple of scenes for about ten minutes of total screen time, but it’s a punishing ten minutes. The wedding sequence near the beginning of the movie is the unquestionable nadir of an already horrible movie. That whole scene was an ordeal to sit through. It was like watching a gratuitous rape scene. It generated that kind of discomfort. If I hadn’t been getting paid to sit there, I would have walked out right then.
Chuck and Larry, Chuck and Larry
Psuedo-gays who pseudo-marry
Find the sitch a little hairy
Larry and Chuck, Larry and Chuck
To prove it ain’t just for the buck
Must do something that really cannot plausibly be fit into this rhyme scheme, goshdarnit.
It’s sitting at a whopping 14% on the Tomatometer. Most of the “positive” reviews are pretty mealy-mouthed, usually praising the movie’s “message of tolerance and acceptance”, while others point out that the message is crammed into five minutes at the end after over two hours of homophobia (not to mention racism).
One positive review by Chris Hewitt of the St. Paul Pioneer Press says, “I now pronounce it better than you’d think.” Better than I’d think? The same could be said for my recent root canal, or a less-than-full-strength kick in the balls.
Nah. You can’t say that of the characters in Some Like It Hot were swindlers. They were two starving musicians who couldn’t get work and had the serrious misfortune of witnessing the Valentine’s Day massacre! The mob was coming to kill them. The only way they could afford to leave town was to join a female band that was going on tour (which had the added benefit of diguising them as well).
Huge difference between two guys committing fraud to “beat the system” and two guys disguising themselves to flee and hide from professional hitmen.
Not according to me, and The American Film Institute. I love “Some Like It Hot”. “Chuck and Larry” and “Freddy Got Fingered” don’t even come close to being as funny as that classic comedy.