Good friends Chuck Levine and Larry Valentine are firefighters. Victims of circumstance, Chuck has to claim Larry to be his domestic partner on some city forms in order to beat some procedural red tape. They think it will be easy because nobody will ever know. After Chuck agrees, the two men go to Niagara Falls to get married, and Chuck moves in with Larry and his unsuspecting kids. However, an official becomes suspicious, and the new couple's arrangement goes from confidential to front-page news. Forced to improvise as love-struck newlyweds, Chuck and Larry must now fumble through a charade of domestic bliss under one roof. After surviving their mandatory honeymoon and dodging the threat of exposure, the well-intentioned conmen discover that sticking together in times of crisis is what truly makes a family.

How easy is it to dismiss this as a cheap shot at situational humour told at the expense of groups who are marginalised by American stereotyping? Hot women lawyers and sleazy gay firemen - do I pepper this review with generalisations too? The backdoor fact (pardon the pun) is that "Chuck And Larry" isn't even half as offensive as the muted disapproval in the media suggests - it's just not that funny.

Originally slapped with the killer 'R' rating in America for 'crude sexual humour and nudity' (which effectively ends distribution to the masses), money talked and the film was edited to a 'PG-13' version after appeals from Universal failed. With content cleanness (yes, that's a word) now squeakier but obviously not to the point of pleasing our scissor-happy Lembaga censors (nor the US Conference Of Catholic Bishop's Office For Film And Broadcasting which labelled it O - 'morally offensive'), it's amusing to note how films with very central themes celebrating America's decadence (the movie has pro-gay overtones) are allowed in at all when the very nature of its content is arguably more 'damaging' than a two-hour montage of cut scenes with Adam Sandler grabbing Jessica Biel's prime breasts and butt-naked firemen picking up bars of soap in the shower.

Yes, you say, "lighten up - it's just a movie!" Yet without turning this into a moral or religious debate (gay people are people, too!), the film sits uncomfortably with Malaysians because gay rights, a pivotal plot device in the movie, aren't aspects of regional cultural understanding. Creative mocking of the American legal system is one thing (people stand up to say anything they please in court and naming your kids as beneficiaries for a settlement can't be done if your wife dies for a year with no action on your part) but suggesting that Law might allow Chuck and Larry to walk away with benefits fraud against the State is another. Why is that important? With a surprising lack of in-your-face toilet humour, the film does appear to want to deliver a message, what with its relatively dialogue-heavy story. On our end, should we care about these sentiments?

Oh but at least we'll get the humour - yet the humour in this movie mixes uneasily with the drama. Far from being Adam Sandler's best ("Happy Gilmore"), his part as Chuck is dislikeable but not enough to be interesting. Kevin James has the more serious role as Larry, who's simply the same character from James' TV series "The King Of Queens". As the comedy tries to go ad hoc, while impressively avoiding slapstick, the boundaries of believability stretch to touch on the tasteless. While we forgive (and almost expect) Rob Schneider ("Deuce Bigalow Male Gigolo") and Dan Aykroyd ("Ghostbusters") for playing the roles they did, it pains the fanboy's heart to see Ving Rhames, the same hard-hitting 6'4" black man in "American History X" and "Pulp Fiction", play the role of a closet homosexual - and worse, to do damned well at it. It's ironic that this is noted to be one of the better things about the movie as well.

Still, there are positives to draw from "Chuck And Larry". The supporting cast all have roles that do develop the film admittedly, the exception being Schneider's Asian church minister character that offends me because it cleverly avoided enough identity to imply racism. Worse, the actor's grandmother is Filipino, which gives him another defence. In any case, the storytelling was smooth enough and well devised with cameos from celebrity gays like veteran actor Richard Chamberlain and even Lance Bass of boyband 'N Sync sang in the movie.

In sum, this would have been a more rewarding watch if the 'R' version came through but for now, the best part of this experience will be the comprehensive soundtrack, not coincidentally made up by anthems from gay or very camp artistes. My favourite is Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" but you won't catch me listening to Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman". Go see this if you do!