Here I must digress. Mac is played by Rob Corddry, to whom this paragraph is addressed. Corddry, you used to be one of the finest fake journalists of your generation, and you've thrown that away to be Ben Stiller's third-string sidekick. What, as it were, is up with that?
Anyway, Eddie pursues his flirtation with Miranda, impeded less by his conscience than by logistical complications and the suspicions of her cousin Martin (Danny McBride, who was also the best thing about Hot Rod). As matters come to a head, Martin will shove a hot pepper up Eddie's nose and later whack him with a baseball bat. Go Martin! Also, Eddie will be stung by a jellyfish and urinated on, though not by Martin, who has too much dignity for that.
This punishment is much better than Eddie, whose caddishness is the movie's authentic and unexamined subject, deserves. And the audience deserves better than easy, lazy jokes about Mexicans, who - get this - speak English with funny accents, play mariachi music and rip off tourists. One of them, a fellow known as Uncle Tito (Carlos Mencia, crawling up from the bottom of the Comedy Central barrel), has a habit of saying shocking things to Eddie, waiting a beat, and then exclaiming, "I was only joking." In its last, desperate moments, The Heartbreak Kid tries something similar, but the punch line comes too late to rescue this lame, long, ugly joke of a movie.
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