Film Reviews

Jack and Jill

• Rating:
• Director: Denis Duggan.
• Starring: Adam Sandler, Al Pacino, Katie Holmes, Nick Swardson.
• Details: US / 91mins (PG).

Stumbling across a website that posted Ten Actors Who Don't Care About Movies, I found it bizarre that Adam Sandler was not included. Or maybe the former funnyman is such a joke now that to include him would be too obvious? Jack And Jill is the latest in a long series of really bad movies and is the worst he's made to date. Jack (Sandler) is an ad exec working hard to land Al Pacino (playing himself) for his latest ad campaign and the last thing he needs is his boorish, shrill, and what looks like mentally challenged, twin sister Jill (Sandler) staying for a few days. But when Pacino falls for Jill, Jack goes about setting them up on a date in the hope that he'll star in his ad campaign… but Jill doesn't fancy Al. In a review stateside, a critic noted that Jack And Jill was so bad he thought it was Sandler's subversive attack on the state of contemporary comedy - a post-modern joke, if you will. There is evidence to support this: there is a running joke that the great Pacino would never lower himself to star in a Dunkin' Donut ad - but he lowered himself to star in this, see? - and when the actor riffs on a speech from Godfather Part II, there is a groan from the audience: Oh no, he's doing the Godfather now! One of Pacino's last lines is, 'Burn this - this must never be seen.' Hmm. Another running joke depicts Mexicans as nothing but border jumpers and jalapeño eaters and that Mexican food gives you the runs (yes, there are poo jokes); these are so blatantly racist that maybe Sandler is showing that racism is idiotic by being as idiotically racist as he can get. It really is the only possibility. So maybe the Jack And Jill/Post Modern Joke theory holds water. It's not only sloppy, lazy writing, it's bad directing too: one scene sees Jack's gardener Felipé (Eugenio Darbez, who also appears as his own grandmother) standing in a doorway and one moment and holding a big bottle of water the next; later, during a skip-rope scene, people are there and then suddenly not. Competent story-telling and direction are no longer needed, folks. There are a few positives to take from this: it's short, Kevin James isn't in it and it'll be another year before Sandler graces our screens again. It's time we lumped Sandler in with the Epic Movie/Meet The Spartans boys as the worst thing to happen to comedy.

Review by Gavin Burke