The films of the Farrelly brothers are, at their core, pretty warm and fuzzy. Good things happen to good people. Sure, a whole slew of bad things happen to them first, but if they didn't, there wouldn't be much of a story. Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid (1972) is not warm and fuzzy. So it makes sense that the Farrelly brothers made some changes to the script when they remade that movie. These alterations may seem minor. They're not.

Both Heartbreaks are about a guy who marries in haste and then repents, also in haste. On his honeymoon, in fact.  In the original, Lenny Cantrow (Charles Grodin) is newly hitched to dark, frizzy, schlumpy, whiny Lila (Jeannie Berlin, the director's daughter). While she's holed up in their hotel room with the mother of all sunburns, Lenny meets Kelly (Cybill Shepherd, then as now the quintessential shiksa goddess). He begins to pursue her. And you understand why. But you don't sympathize, at least not without a twinge of guilt. And you feel very, very sorry for Lila, who can't even eat an egg salad sandwich without looking like a fool.

The new film, which opens October 5, sounds quite different. In a recent interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Bobby Farrelly explained one revision. "The first girl is just drop-dead gorgeous -- the one he marries -- but she turns out to be a little nuttier than he thought. You didn't feel so bad for her, because you knew she was going to be OK, anyway, so it's not like he's kicking her to the curb and trading up."

In the 1972 film, trading up is precisely what Lenny has in mind. Which is not to say the Farrelly brothers haven't made a valid choice in shifting the focus of the film. Film Festival News' Lisa Nesselson called their latest an "(u)proarious romp, grounded in believable if gleefully implausible human behavior...a model of comic timing."  So the Farrelly brothers have obviously done something very right. It's just a whole 'nother kettle of gefilte fish.