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The funny heartbreak kid

THERE ARE two people in the world who may never see the new comedy "The Heartbreak Kid." Their names are Ella Stiller and Quinlin Stiller, and they're the 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son of the movie's star.

"Maybe in 45 years I'll let my kids watch it," says Ben Stiller, whose outrageous sex scenes this time out go beyond even those he did in the Farrelly brothers' "There's Something about Mary" (1998).

"The Heartbreak Kid," a remake of a 1972 Neil Simon film that starred Charles Grodin, is about a guy named Eddie who falls in love on his honeymoon - but not with his wife. This version, also directed by the Farrelly brothers, updates the story and upsexes the bedroom scenes. Newcomer Malin Akerman plays the wife and Michelle Monaghan the other woman. The star's real-life father, Jerry Stiller, plays Eddie's sex-obsessed father.

"In this story, and in the original also, the guy is really trying to make the relationship work and do the right thing," the 41-year-old Stiller says, speaking by telephone from the set of "Tropic Thunder," an action comedy he is directing in Hawaii. "He doesn't want to shoot himself in the foot. In the original film the guy is much younger. In this story he's 40 and wanting a family. He sees his ex-girlfriend get married and move on.

"In our culture there's a lot of pressure for guys to get married and start a family," the actor says. "I've had friends who've had kids, and then six or seven years later they get married. And they're still together. I'm OK with that approach. The marriage has been tested already."

Stiller himself was a little more impulsive when, at 34, he finally got around to tying the knot with actress Christine Taylor.

"I'd had a couple of relationships in my life that were very serious," he says. "When I met my wife, I was very sure. I knew she was the one immediately. And I wasn't looking for a relationship at all - I just knew how much I enjoyed being with her. It took me awhile to see that it was easy and fun, but that's OK. There was no angst involved, and that was a new feeling for me. We were engaged within five or six months."

Their courtship and wedding, Stiller adds, could have formed the basis for "Meet the Parents" (2000), which he was filming at the time. His prospective father-in-law wasn't a former CIA agent, as Robert De Niro's character is in the film, but there were distinct resemblances.

"The stages of our relationship were parallel," he recalls. "I had to meet Christine's dad and tell him I wanted to marry his daughter. He owned a security company in Allentown, Pa. As I was talking to him, I was thinking, 'This is oddly similar."'

Fortunately for Stiller, his own wedding and honeymoon didn't resemble Eddie's experience in "The Heartbreak Kid."

"Christine and I got married in Hawaii," he says. "It was very low-key, just friends. There were no big traumas. In retrospect we should have stayed in Hawaii for our honeymoon, but we went to Australia, to a little island off the coast. There was only one hotel on the island, but one day we went exploring and found a deserted hotel on the other side of the island. It was like a weird combination of 'Survivor' and 'Lost.'

"It rained the whole time, so we ended up in our room, playing cards and watching movies."

In "The Heartbreak Kid" Eddie has such a whirlwind romance that he and his beautiful, blonde bride don't know much about each other by the time they're on their way to Mexico for their honeymoon. By the time they arrive in Cabo, he has regrets. Their athletic bedroom activities scare him, though they bring howls of laughter from the audience.

Many of his comedies mine sex for laughs, so Stiller has a few theories about why that works.

"It's something everybody does and everybody doesn't talk about," he says. "It's a huge issue in our lives, but such a secret thing. Yet, when you see it in a movie as a communal experience, you're somehow freer."

In such scenes Stiller has an uncanny knack for appearing totally ridiculous while somehow keeping it real.

"In those types of situations," he says, "you have to be willing to take a chance and go with what's going on in the scene. You have to try things, and trust that the director won't use it if it doesn't work. If you're not able to go with that, you can't fulfill the needs of the movie. I have a way of disconnecting myself from the reality of it."

That memorable hair-gel scene helped propel Stiller onto the A-list, and there he remains despite occasional misfires such as "Duplex" (2003) and "Envy" (2004). The huge success of such films as "Meet the Parents," "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story" (2004) and "Night at the Museum" (2006) has made him one of Hollywood's most bankable stars.

Audiences will be seeing and hearing a lot of Stiller in the next few years. He has already completed the comedy "The Marc Pease Experience" and is acting in and directing "Tropical Thunder," both due next year. He is doing voice work on "Elmo's Christmas Countdown," set to air in December, and reprising his role as Alex the lion in "Madagascar: The Crate Escape."