This deranged 2000s slapstick comedy is perfect for Jack Black fans

One of the most stressful things about revisiting a movie you used to watch a lot in your youth is the prospect of watching it age like milk in the sun. Comedy, in particular, is perhaps the genre most likely to go stale long after its expiration date. In that regard, “Saving Silverman” is a product of its time, with a wildly deranged comedic plot centered around a kidnapping, but God help me, it still makes me laugh. Let it be on the record that I’m not here to hail “Happy Gilmore” director Dennis Dugan as some sort of secretly brilliant filmmaker. But I think, however, that the dark humor which prevails throughout this story criticized comedy from the early 2000s Made me laugh a lot more than I expected. Not to mention the movie also features Jack Black with some sage advice: “If you stick the nachos together, it makes a nacho.”

“Saving Silverman” centers on three best friends who have known each other since they were children. Darren Silverman (Jason Biggs), Wayne Leferssier (Steve Zahn) and JD McNugent (Jack Black) are not only still close friends years later, but they also formed a Neil Diamond cover band together. Nothing in the world could Never keep them apart, until Darren begins a relationship with the incredibly beautiful Judith Snodgrass-Fessbeggler (Amanda Peet), who almost takes complete control of his life. With the surprise arrival of Darren’s high school crush, Sandy Perkus (Amanda Detmer), back in town, big-brained geniuses Wayne and JD propose kidnapping Judith to push Darren towards his TRUE love.

If there’s one early 2000s comedy in which all of its main characters should rightfully be in prison by the end, it’s “Saving Silverman.”

On the surface, “Saving Silverman” should be a misogynistic disaster given that it’s largely about two slobs trying to save their third from his terrible girlfriend so he can date the nice girl (who’s training to be a nun) he’s always dreamed of. Judith is written as an emotionally manipulative psychologist who not only forces Darren to burn his Neil Diamond records, but can also revoke his… um… self-soothing privileges in no time. But against all odds, this winning ensemble does an excellent job of extracting humor from its many horrifying scenarios. Everyone in “Saving Silverman” is so caricatured that it’s hard to take them even remotely seriously.

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that we were able to come up with a studio comedy in which there is an extended sequence in which two men sneakily break into a woman’s house so that they can temporarily chain her up in their basement in the name of love. It’s thanks to the incredibly funny Peet that Black and Zahn’s characters come across as even bigger idiots. Judith not only knows how to easily get under their skin without even trying, but she hits on them every chance she gets. This would an entertaining and twisted double feature with “Bugonia”.

The bouts of dark humor in “Saving Silverman” can also be found in a hilarious gag where everyone’s aversion to true love comes through because their partners were killed in such an over-the-top way. There’s even a crazy sequence where Black and Zahn rob a corpse’s grave, put it in Judith’s car, and drive it over the side of a cliff, where the only thing they lament is that JD lost his favorite jacket in the wreck.

“He’s my puppet, and I’m his puppet master,” is ironically how writers Hank Nelken and Greg DePaul see Biggs in this. The ‘American Pie’ star is little more than a blank plot catalyst to give Black and Zahn, the real stars of “Saving Silverman,” room to run amok. Their incredible chemistry truly makes it feel like they’ve been best friends for years. JD and Wayne are so ill-equipped to deal with their predicament that the sight of them holding a gun together is enough to make me burst out laughing. Black even gets some of the best line readings with “you pinched bread on the law? I’m playing croquet over there” and “I think I see something in the back of the refrigerator… in the back of the cupboard.” It is, however, a shame that these two did not do a series of comedies together, with their big screen reunion being the terrible ‘Anaconda’ reboot more than 24 years later.

The funniest character might actually be “Full Metal Jacket” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” star R. Lee Ermey as the trio’s former high school football coach. “The victim’s whiny family is protesting,” he hilariously says in response to the accidental killing of a referee with a flagpole for refusing to call a touchdown.

If there’s any sort of thematic reading to be made of “Saving Silverman,” it’s that these characters will go to incredible lengths to maintain some form of security even though it clearly makes them unhappy. Whether you take a look at the PG-13 or the slightly longer R-rated versions, one thing is certain: this slapstick farce will get to “yeaaaaahaaaaaa”.

“Saving Silverman” is currently streaming on Tubi.