It isn't always easy to like the films of Bob and Peter Farrelly. But this re-adaptation of the witty Elaine May film from the Seventies is less raucous than Dumb and Dumber and has a performance from Ben Stiller that proves he can act better than most people give him credit for.

He is Eddie, a picky bachelor boy whose chance encounter with a pretty blonde called Lila (Malin Akerman) ends up in marriage as much because of his father's bullying as because of any conviction that love has finally got him hooked.

The result is an almost instant disaster. She nearly kills him in bed, perpetually sings along to ghastly songs as the pair make their way by car down the Californian coast towards their Mexican hideaway, and gets sunburn so badly when they get there he can't touch her.

As Lila suffers in their room, Eddie meets Michelle Monaghan's lively Miranda, who introduces him to her blue collar family, then takes up with him despite their doubts and without knowing he is there with his new wife. This forms the basis of the hilarity, as Eddie tries to find a suitable way out of his marriage without losing the girl of his dreams.

There are some good jokes, notably when Eddie's awful dad (Ben's real-life father, Jerry Stiller) perpetually asks him about "pussy" and then changes it to "snatch" when he objects. But the film as a whole is quite long and slow for a Farrelly Brothers movie; it doesn't go over the edge in devil-may-care profanity and presents Stiller with a chance to draw us a rounded character with whom it is easy to identify.

The difference between this and the Elaine May movie is largely a matter of subtlety - something the Farrellys don't really do. So instead of the Jewish boy who marries a wearisome Jewish girl only to find himself in love with a brighter Gentile, we have something less based on racial and cultural mores.

It's all a bit predictable, despite its downbeat finale, but never dull. If I didn't laugh enough it was purely a matter of not being able to take Stiller, even at his best, for very long. Others may well find The Heartbreak Kid one of the better comedies of the year.