The film features Cameron Diaz as the title character, while Ben Stiller, Matt Dillon, Lee Evans, and Chris Elliott all play men who are in love with Mary, and vying for her affection.

Her performance additionally was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

In 1985, Providence, Rhode Island, 16-year-old high school student Ted Stroehmann is about to go on a prom date with his dream girl, Mary Jensen, when he gets his scrotum stuck in his zipper.

On the advice of his best friend, Dom Woganowski, Ted hires private investigator Pat Healy to track her down.

Healy and Mary spend several weeks dating before her British architect friend Tucker exposes his lies.

Angered over this, Healy confronts him and discovers Tucker actually is an American pizza delivery boy named Norm Phipps who also is infatuated with Mary.

When Mary reads an anonymous letter revealing that Ted hired Healy to find her, she becomes upset and dumps him.

Ted then arrives along with Brett Favre, an ex-boyfriend Mary dumped after Norm lied about him insulting Warren.

Magda’s boyfriend uses a sniper rifle to attempt to shoot Ted for kissing Mary (as he is also infatuated with her), but hits one of the band members instead.

[3] According to Bobby, the scene where Ted accidentally gets his scrotum stuck in his pants fly was inspired by a real incident, when their sister was listening to some records with some eighth grade students in the basement of their house: "One of the kids went up [to the bathroom] and he zipped himself up.

[5] Besides Ben Stiller, actors Owen Wilson and Jon Stewart were considered potential candidates for the role of Ted Stroehmann.

[8] Because the Farrelly brothers were fans of the New England Patriots, they originally wanted to cast quarterback Drew Bledsoe as Mary's football-playing boyfriend, but he could not do it due to a mosh incident he had in a club.

The Farrelly brothers later offered the role to Steve Young, but he turned it down due to the film's coarse nature.

The site's consensus reads: "There's Something About Mary proves that unrelentingly, unabashedly puerile humor doesn't necessarily come at the expense of a film's heart.