Jack and Jill

Xenu said there'd be days like this

Grade: D –

Director: Dennis Dugan

Starring: Adam Sandler, Al Pacino,Katie Holmes, Nick Swardson and Eugenio Derbez

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 30 min.

At the heart of Adam Sandler’s latest comedic romp, Jack and Jill, are lessons about the extricable bonds of family and the existential duality of the human soul, encapsulated under the guise of…oh, who the heck am I kidding?

The degree of celebrity and financial success that Sandler continues to amass as aresult of films that are increasingly and resoundingly putrid is fascinating only if one day we learn that the entirety of Sandler’s career was one big lampoon of Hollywood: a marginally talented star spoon-feeds producers and moviegoers a steady diet of clichéd scripts, awful actors, lazy filmmaking and offensive material,and they keep coming back for more.

If this were somehow true, then Jack and Jill would represent Sandler’s attempt to see just how low his fans will go. The cross-dressing comedy hasn’t truly worked since Tootsie, but that doesn’t stop Sandler and the indefensible Dennis Dugan from slapping on a dress and foisting this affront to the medium. Set around the Thanksgiving and Hanukkah seasons, Los Angeles ad exec Jack Sadelstein (Sandler) ruefully awaits the annual arrival of Jill (Sandler in a wig, makeup, fat suit and grating accent), his identical twin sister. Jill is loud, needy, embarrassing and obnoxious – frankly, a scene in which she talks loudly on her cell phone in a movie theater make her fair game for ridicule. But, she’s still preferable to Jack, who is regularly and inexplicably cruel to Jill, giddy when his adopted son punches her in the face and when she crash-lands a jet ski outside his pool.

In other words, the audience isn’t given a reason to like either sibling or, for that matter, anyone else in this dumpster fire of a movie. Jack’s throwaway family includes dim bulb wife Erin (Katie Holmes, grinning mindlessly) and an adopted moppet from India who has a bizarre but pointless fetish for Scotch-taping objects, including animals, to his body.

The first fart joke comes during the opening credits, eventually metastasizing into a full-blown diarrhea gag after Jill scarfs down some chimichangas. And Sandler trots out his usual unholy triumvirate: choppy editing, useless celebrity cameos and casual racism. Famed Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez is ethnically emasculated, playing a gardener who cracks wise about crossing the border inside a car trunk and takes Jill to a gathering of la familia that features piñatas and an one-toothed old woman revived from unconsciousness by shoving red chili peppers in her mouth.

Playing himself, Al Pacino becomes infatuating with Jill after spying her at a Lakers basketball game and embarks on an extended, fanatical courtship. Rehashing lines from The Godfather and donning Tony Montana’s black suit from Scarface eventually devolves into watching the acting legend tickle-fight with the cross-dressing Sandler inside a medieval castle and perform a rap routine in a commercial for flavored coffee.

While Pacino’s presence here seemingly represents a new nadir in his career, he manages to turn this utter rubbish into something oddly satirical. He tackles each scene with such gusto that you soon realize that while Sandler is paying slapdash homage, Pacino has something more cunning in mind. He turns the film’s inanity to his advantage, spoofing his onscreen personas as a means toward skewering the entire Hollywood system. Jill consoles Pacino after smashing his Oscar statuette by reminding him that “you must have others.” “You’d think it,”he deadpans. “But no.” Later, Pacino longingly recalls his native New York City, lamenting L.A. as a place “where all the palm trees look the same” and productions of Richard III feature Bruce Jenner as Lord Hastings.

In spite of itself, Jack and Jill will likely fetch Sandler another big payday. Still, when Pacino appears in a NYC bar at film’s end dressed as Don Quixote and starts tilting a ceiling fan, it’s a joke that’s too smart for the room and more self-aware than a movie that’s (literally) full of shit deserves.

Neil Morris

Grown Ups

What are those video cameras doing here?

Grade: D +

Director: Dennis Dugan

Starring: Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Salma Hayek, and Maria Bello

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

It is hard to tell whether the title to Grown Ups is ironic or just simply wrong-headed. While age figures into what passes for a plot in this cinematic equivalent of an induced coma, maturity – both onscreen and in the production room – certainly does not. Grown Ups is The Big Chill for imbeciles, starring a coterie of clowns that might fancy themselves as some comedic Rat Pack but are really just an ex-SNLers version of the Blue Collar Comedy troupe.

Then again, what else should you expect from Adam Sander’s increasingly irksome Happy Gilmore Productions and its hack director of choice, Dennis Dugan? There’s a hierarchy to the quintet of cronies starring here: Sandler and Chris Rock are top-rung moneymakers (Rock particularly ought to know better), Kevin James (blatantly subbing for the late Chris Farley) is the up-and-comer, while David Spade and Rob Schneider are hanging onto the caboose of this gravy train.

Together, they play childhood friends brought back together in their New England hometown (identified onscreen as “New England”) over Independence Day weekend upon the passing of their junior high school basketball coach. Spade is Marcus, the hopeless bachelor; Schneider plays the creatively named Rob, a New Ager on his third marriage to a granola granny wife; James is Eric, whose daughter has severe social dysfunctions and a wife (Maria Bello) still breastfeeding their four-year-old son; Rock plays house-husband Kurt to his thrice-pregnant and career-driven wife (Myra Rudolph); and Sandler is Lenny, a jet-setting Hollywood agent with a Chinese au pair, spoiled kids who order Voss water at greasy burger joints, and a fashion designer wife played by Salma Hayek. Uh, guess again which actor is also the film’s producer.

After their coach’s funeral, the five amigos plus families decide to spend a few days lounging around the lakeside lodge of their youth. Actually, they spend the time forcibly laughing at each other’s zingers, most of them thinly veiled jabs at their real-life personas – Spade is called “the third Olson twin”; the portly James is congratulated for finally reaching a B-cup. And, when they aren’t playfully jabbing each other, Sandler and Co. lean against the comic crutches they packed for the trip: children, old people, scantily-clad women, animals, white trash, and lots and lots of scatology. Of course there’s a trip to the water park, and of course there’s a gag revolving around the guys peeing in the kiddie pool. Tack on some half-written sideshow about a rematch against their basketball rivals from 30 years ago, and that’s it…that’s the “storyline.”

Even the usually reliable Rock is relegated to calling his annoying, bunion-afflicted mother-in-law names like “Toe-be Bryant” and “Toe-J Simpson.” Hardy, har, har. I did like the brief argument between Rock and opposing ex-baller Tim Meadows about who is the town’s black guy and which one is the town’s “other black guy,” a not-to-subtle reference to their erstwhile token status while cast members on SNL.

Otherwise, the jokes land with the nimbleness of lead weights. The whole sorry spectacle smacks of a money grab, with the actors getting both a paycheck and a subsidized Massachusetts vacation. Mostly, however, Grown Ups is a string of barely realized setups, with only a late, lazy stab at moralizing more infuriating than the truckload of stupid humor that precedes it. The film’s stars may be getting older, but their comedy remains as juvenile as ever.

Neil Morris