A movie maker unwittingly gets a bit too involved with his subjects in this darkly comic mockumentary. Andrew (Andrew Gurland) is a documentary filmmaker who wants to make a picture about modern-day mail order marriage. Andrew thinks he's found the perfect subject for his film when he meets Adrian (Adrian Martinez), a stocky snake enthusiast from Queens, NY, who earns his living as a doorman and has never had much luck with women. Adrian wants choose a bride from a professional marriage broker's
agency called Paradise Girls, and Andrew agrees to foot the bill in exchange for the rights to make a movie about him. Adrian soon weds Lichi (Eugenia Yuan), an attractive Burmese woman, but Andrew is less than pleased to discover what Adrian really wants from his relationship is a woman who will feed mice to his pet python, make chili just the way he likes it, and keep the house spotless while occasionally indulging some of his odder sexual fantasies. Lichi isn't happy either, and at Andrew's urging she leaves Adrian and moves into Andrew's apartment until she decides what to do next. Andrew falls for Lichi, and before long he asks for her hand in marriage; however, her relationship with Adrian has stripped Lichi of her illusions, and she becomes a very demanding bride who loudly speaks her mind and has accumulated a large and expensive collection of pig-related nick knacks. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Co-directors Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland, who appear as earnest documentary filmmakers of the same name, pull it off by never winking at the audience or signaling in any fashion that this isn't a true story.
The events of the plot are far too disturbing when they're darkly humorous and far too over-the-top to be truly credible when they're meant to be funny.
More an exercise in sustaining a style than a satisfying emotional experience. The men are all self-centered boors, and the women, it turns out, aren't much better. There's nobody in this movie to root for or care about.
Like a Farrelly Brothers movie, Mail Order Wife tries to be both politically correct and incorrect at the same time. The results are entertaining, but may cause uneasy mixed feelings.
Absolutely one of the best mockumentaries ever made. Period. Mail Order Wife starts out with a bang, and a large part of that is due to the over-the-top performance by Adrien Martinez, who plays a man who is in the process of bringing an Asian woman named Lychee to the states to marry him. Lynchee soons finds that
she's in for less of a taste of the American dream, and instead finds herself practically Adrian's slave. Despite the film slowing down a bit towards the end, it's still an enjoyable, twisted dark comedy. And Jose Canseco freakin' rules!
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