I’m wondering what the tolerance levels are for that cell-phone-dropped-in-the-gross-toilet scene in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. I realize this may be a cultural failing on my part, but I have a real problem with body-waste humor — in movies, in real life, anywhere. Did I just write that? The grossification of movie comedy continues on a downswirl. It used to be that seltzer bottles and custard cream pies were laugh props; today, the brown torpedo.

What would the ghosts of Irving Thalberg, Preston Sturges, Ernst Lubitsch or Billy Wilder say about the ongoing fecal-matter syndrome in contempo films about twentysomething characters? Which began with those two scenes in Danny Boyle‘s Trainspotting…right?
To quote from Pete Hammond‘s Backstage review: “Norah’s friend Caroline, played to the hilt with grating drunken abandon by Ari Graynor, gets separated from the pack and winds up passed out in a public bathroom, where she later tries to retrieve her cell phone and chewing gum, which have fallen into a toilet that looks like it has never been flushed. This attempt at gross-out comedy is where I checked out.”