Jack and Jill
I saw this turd... something like... three weeks ago now. And other than being busy, I just haven't been looking forward to writing about it. Don't get me wrong, I have no one to blame but myself. I willingly went to see it. Granted, I want to get to 58 movies seen this year and I realize I'm going to have to make sacrifices. This was one of them. It may very well be to take the horse that was Adam Sandler to the cinematic version of the glue factory... (Ok, I just wanted to use that metaphor. I have never really thought highly of Sandler. He's always been more ass than horse..right?)
So yeah, the movie... it follows two Sandlers; one Jack Sadelstein, an ad man at a struggling firm and the other, his twin sister whose sole purpose in life is to annoy the hell out of everyone she comes in contact with. Jill (a Bronx "girl") always visits Jack in L.A. for the Thanksgiving holiday. Jack always hates Jill's visit. The difference this year is that their mother had passed away (one too many visits with Jill perhaps) and so Jill is all alone and looking to stay longer than usual- up to and including Jack's family's planned New Years cruise. As you can imagine as this is a typical Sandler flick- bodily function jokes, stupid voices, and all sorts of grade school-caliber "hilarity" ensue. Oh there's also a plot line involving Jack needing Al Pacino (who overplays a one-note, demented version of himself) to do a ridiculous Dunkin Donuts commercial and Pacino needing to bone Jack's sister. This storyline is played to its limit and then some. In the end, a forced, Full House-esque, appealing to families resolution occurs. And we all leave the theater in a daze of depression.
And that may just be it. This movie was so bad, it killed any sense of emphatic reaction I could have. Some movies, like Transformers, are bad enough to rile me up, this one was bad enough to defeat me. The jokes were flat and redundant. The acting was... well... hardly acting. The story was incredibly unoriginal and predictable... even by Sandler's new low of a standard. The movie was just awful. And I knew all this going in. Well, I knew it would suck going in. The only fun I had was trying to figure out what happened to Sandler. He used to appeal to my generation. Look, I know I'm growing up... and it's quite possible that he's regressing (a midst a sea of cash, mind you), but I can't figure out where the transition (for me) from his being mildly amusing to his being enormously annoying occurred. All such pondering occurred solely within the confines of the first few minutes of the movie. The minute Jill opened his/her mouth, all intelligent thought committed suicide in my brain. And then I just sort of sat there, too defeated to do much but just watch. No cringing, no eye-rolling. Just sitting, waiting for it to end, waiting for the house lights to come on so I could meander out of the theater and on with my life. And so it went. And I quickly forgot anything that might possibly qualify as a finer detail to the movie.
I couldn't, however, forget that shrill shriek that served as Jill's speaking (read: whining, b/c that's all she did through the whole damn thing) voice. What Sandler achieved here was a level of annoyance that went beyond grating and into the realm of physical discomfort. I'm actually proud of myself for not walking out given how terrible that voice was to listen to. And I so wanted to. Right from the first word Jill uttered. But then it would have seemed like I went to the movie just so I could walk out of it within the first half hour. Pleasant thought, but then it wouldn't have qualified for this list. So I took one for the team- my team... of one...me- and stayed to the so sweet it's bitter end.
It's possible that Sandler is a veritable Picasso of fart jokes and grade school humor. Well even if he's not in a traditional sense, I'm sure Picasso doodled some stick figures or something every now and again. Yeah, actually maybe that's just it... maybe this was just some pencil sketch-version of a potty-humor master piece! Yeah... well... no.. no. It actually just plain sucked.
Grade: F
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