Review: Jack and Jill

Adam Sandler goes 0-2 in 2011, and this awfully unfunny and desperate comedy directed by Dennis Dugan is even worse than “Just Go With It”. That’s quite an achievement actually (It also won more Razzies than any film previously, winning in every category. Bravo, Mr. Sandler!). In fact, it might just be the worst Adam Sandler vehicle I’ve thus far seen (And I’ve seen “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan”!). Sandler and co-writer Steve Koren have taken a not very good concept of Sandler playing male and female twin siblings, and have proceeded to practically do nothing with it at all. Nothing good, at any rate. I knew from the trailer that this would be awful, but actually watching the film whole I honestly can’t believe that even the juvenile Sandler would stoop this low.

The plot that has been inspired by this concept is absolutely appalling, and frankly insulting: Jack (Adam Sandler) is a crappy advertising exec desperate to get Al Pacino (Al, you broke my heart!) to appear in a Dunkin’ Donuts ad. Meanwhile, his estranged (and frankly weird) spinster sister Jill (also Sandler, but with a whiny voice) has come to visit Jack, his wife (Katie Holmes), and their kids for Thanksgiving. And maybe through Hanukkah, much to Jack’s chagrin. Attending a basketball game together, Jack spots Pacino in the crowd, but before he can rope him in, Pacino has become smitten with the obnoxious Jill! Jack tries to exploit the situation, but unfortunately, Jill seems more interested in Jack’s sweet-natured, widowed Hispanic gardener than Pacino (who she doesn’t even seem to recognise). So you’ve got Sandler in drag, Al Pacino (did he think this was some kinda mixture of “Tootsie” and “The King of Comedy”?), and a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial as the basic plot for your film. Seriously? Maybe the idea of Rob Schneider learning martial arts to avoid prison rape isn’t such a bad movie idea after all. What’s worse is that Sandler actually seems less concerned about the plot and more interested in his celebrity (Johnny Depp, Drew Carey, John McEnroe, ‘Jared from Subway’- who is unknown outside of the US, I might add) and crony (David Spade, Norm MacDonald, Allen Covert, Dana Carvey, Tim Meadows) cameos, which are even more frequent and extraneous than usual, not to mention completely unfunny. David Spade has made me laugh at times, but David Spade in drag is even less funny than Adam Sandler in drag. I normally find the deadpan Norm MacDonald hilarious (at least in small doses), but not here as Jill’s would be online match, and Tim Meadows (as Jack’s business associate) really ought not to appear in any more films with “SNL” alum because he never gets roles that are remotely funny. Meanwhile, I guess Rob Schneider read the script this time and figured this was beneath him. Yeah, the guy who directed and starred in “Big Stan” must have standards (I wouldn’t mind betting he was the first choice for the creepy, bug-eyed Mexican grandma role, though). The lovely Katie Holmes, meanwhile, is cast as Sandler’s wife, but her performance suggests Sandler’s actually one of her kids and it almost seems like she’s reading from a script for a completely different film. It’s the damndest thing, and Sandler really does need to stop casting Hollywood hotties as his love interests. It’s pathetic, Mr. Sandler, as he and Holmes just don’t mesh at all as a romantic couple. She looks like she’d rather be with Tom Cruise (Too soon?).

This is just so lazy and shameless from a guy who clearly knows better. I know not every Sandler film can be a “Funny People” (his best film to date), but he’s also the guy who made “50 First Dates”, “The Wedding Singer”, “Bedtime Stories”, and the underrated “Little Nicky”. Hell, I can even defend parts of “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” and “Reign Over Me”. But this? I know Sandler was probably gearing this at kids and his usual crowd, but this awful material and overall sham of a movie is an insult even to those who enjoy even some of his more juvenile offerings. This isn’t juvenile, it’s barely even a movie. It’s almost too lazy to earn the right to be called a movie. It’s like Sandler and co came up with the basic idea of him playing identical twins and then they all went on vacation and the rest was made up on the spot once shooting began, with the celebrity cameos and crude humour just a way to cut corners and get around the fact that this is basically an incomplete movie. That’s showing gross contempt for your audience.

 

Sandler isn’t awful as Jack (he’s barely different from any other Sandler character), but the character of Jill and his performance in the role is idiotic and annoying from start to finish. Jill is creepy, annoying, and thoroughly unconvincing, even for the purposes of a silly comedy. I just don’t believe such a character would really exist (and not because of the implausibility of male and female identical twins), and be able to get away with her obnoxious, foul (flatulence and grotesque body sweat issues), and ignorant behaviour (Haha, Jill’s so stupid she’s never used the internet before. Groan). It’s a complete comic miscalculation (The duo playing at times like a combination of Sheldon and Amy from “The Big Bang Theory”, minus their intelligence and minus anything remotely funny) from a comedian who doesn’t have the best hit-to-miss ratio to begin with. Even worse is when Sandler as Jack is forced to pretend to be his twin sister. Sandler simply gives the exact same performance, and whilst that makes the deception convincing, I guess, it’s also completely pointless, in another sense because nothing is really done with it. He does the impersonation, Pacino buys it, and given Jill doesn’t like Pacino, and Sandler as Jack pretending to be Jill probably doesn’t like being seduced by Pacino (or any other guy), there winds up being little to no difference. So why have Jack impersonate Jill at all, really? I mean, from an audience perspective, why would I want to watch the exact same bad performance twice? The idea just hasn’t been thought out enough, either that, or Sandler was just too lazy to really differentiate between the two siblings at this point. Truth be told, Jill isn’t worthy of being in a film, she’s a bad “SNL” creation at best (If she weren’t a drag act, I could totally see Cheri Oteri having excruciatingly played such a character during her interminable stint on the show). Sandler doesn’t even try and make it convincing.

The absolute nadir of the film is the reveal of the actual Dunkin’ Donuts commercial, which is completely embarrassing. Yes, it’s meant to be really silly, but it isn’t remotely funny. It’s sad to watch Pacino in the mock commercial (Not that his real-life cawwwfee adds are much better), and when he subsequently tells Sandler to ‘burn this’, he might be talking about the ad, but he should’ve been talking about the film as a whole. You’ll be reading similar snarky comments in other reviews, but the fact is, it’s not just a snarky comment, it’s a fitting one. The film is a desperate and cynical exercise, the kind of film you’d expect Sandler’s character from “Funny People” to make. It makes you wonder if Sandler understood the point of those scenes in “Funny People”, or if he’s just a money-grubbing jerk who simply doesn’t care.

 

I won’t deny I smiled a couple of times- a “Star Wars” reference, for instance, wasn’t bad and a line about Brando is worth a chuckle. But this is a really pathetic and insultingly lazy excuse for a film. It’s PG, but surely even kids would find this completely beneath them.

 

Rating: D