The Farrelly brothers return to their raunchy, raucous roots with this remake of “The Heartbreak Kid” and it works, for awhile, and then something misfires somewhere and it kinds of loses you.

The story revolves around Eddie (Ben Stiller), a 40 year old bachelor who gets urged by his married friend and womanizing father to pull the trigger and jump into a relationship. Eddie has met Lila, a woman who seems like a great match, and six weeks later the couple is married and on their way to Cabo for a romantic honeymoon. Soon, Eddie starts seeing Lila (Malin Akerman) as a whole package, and he becomes less and less enchanted. In addition to some annoying peccadilloes, some more grotesque than others, Lila is also unemployed, in debt and, quite possibly, emotionally unstable.

The honeymoon feels over before it even begins.

Eddie then meets Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), a single woman vacationing with her family, and the two hit it off famously. Eddie falls in love with Miranda and bemoans the fact that he got married a week too early. Eddie and Miranda, and her family, all have a great time together but Eddie still has his marriage to deal with and he concocts all sorts of lies and schemes to spend time with Miranda and avoid Lila.

Up until this point, I liked Eddie and felt for him, but Lila becomes more sympathetic as a character as Eddie continues to gallivant around with Miranda. The roles have now reversed and our hero is just a jerk. This is where things started to fall apart for me, despite some fun moments throughout the rest of the film.

Here’s what did work for me though - the cast. It was terrific from top to bottom, especially in the supporting roles. Rob Corddry as Mac and Carlos Mencia (I know, I’m just as surprised as you) as Uncle Tito were great, as was Danny McBride as Miranda’s cousin Martin. The leads were all solid as well. Ben Stiller was funny, although I’d love to see more character work from him. He was so good in “Zoolander” and on his short-lived, but classic show “The Ben Stiller Show.” Monaghan is beautiful and hard not to fall in love with and Akerman is gorgeous and hilarious. She could and should break out of this like Cameron Diaz did out of “There’s Something About Mary.”

There are a lot of big laughs in this movie, especially early on, and if you liked any of the Farrelly brothers’ other films, there is no reason you won’t like this. However, unlike their earlier work, you can’t really root for their hero, but you aren’t really urged to root against him either. “The Heartbreak Kid” is a black comedy and I think it may have worked better if the Farrellys (guys who have shown big, big hearts) went a little darker and made things a little more defined.

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