Review of Jack and Jill, starring Adam Sandler, Katie Holmes, Al Pacino, Shaquille O'Neal and Nick Swardson.
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It seems a lot of the time, former Saturday Night Live stars abandon their sketch roots when they get into movies and essentially play different versions of themselves. But a few times, they’ve gone back to their roots and created memorable characters to hide behind. They’ve even played multiple characters within those same movies – and like when they were on SNL, they hit on something that grabs the public.
Think of Mike Myers in the Austin Powers films or Eddie Murphy in Coming To Americaand the Nutty Professor movies. We all quote the characters and adapt their catch phrases. We stop on those movies whenever we flip through the channels. We dress like them for Halloween.
Neither Jack nor Jill is going to inspire any of that kind of love.
Adam Sandler was never really a great sketch comic – his characters on SNL were always just different levels of goofy, so it’s not like we should have expected his new Jack and Jill to be any kind of return to form. Sandler plays twins Jack and Jill but doesn’t make any great transformation. It’s Sandler wearing make-up and a dress. In the Sandler-Land that is his Happy Madison films, he’s played the cool guy in recent years – so the transformation to Jill is kind of like when a football player wears a dress for Halloween. We’re supposed to laugh because he’s going against type, but we know it’s really not all that creative.
OK, to be fair, Jack and Jill are twins, so Sandler can’t transform into another person altogether. They have to look alike. Sadly, the lack of creativity that goes into Sandler’s costuming and makeup also infected director Dennis Dugan’s script. The basic idea is that Jack and Jill’s mother has passed away, and Jill, who lived with Mom in the Bronx, is spending her first holiday season alone. So she travels to Californiato spend Thanksgiving with Jack and his family. She really grates on Jack, and he can’t wait for her to leave. But she is desperate for attention from her brother and extends her visit.
Jack’s nonsensical plan to get rid of her is to find her a boyfriend – there in California. It never occurs to him or anyone else that if she finds a boyfriend she likes – she’ll stay. But really the dating subplot is an excuse for jokes where men can wonder if Jill is really a guy (one character comes right out and asks). It gives Sandler an excuse to try on different dresses and attempt to make us laugh at how short they are or how fat his ass looks in them.
Sandler’s Jill is hideous to look at and obnoxious to listen to. The occasional tear doesn’t make her endearing; it just makes us sympathize with Jack. That’s not what we’re supposed to do though, since this movie shoehorns in a “value of family” message to try and make us leave the theater smiling. If this is like any Eddie Murphy movie, it’s like Norbit, where Murphy also played an obnoxious woman. But at least his makeup is good.
The jokes are crude, boring and obvious. And as if we didn’t already see them coming, some jokes are explained to us. When Jill leaves a sweaty outline of herself on the bed, it’s not enough for us to just see it. Jack has to call it a “sweat shadow.” It’s not enough for us to see Jill lift weights that jacked-up musclemen in the gym can’t – the movie belabors the point by having the dudes do double takes and keep trying to lift long after we got it. And when Al Pacino, as himself, busts out a Godfather quote, we have to hear an onlooker say “Did he just bust out the Godfather?”
You may now scroll back up and re-read the part about Al Pacino playing himself in an Adam Sandler movie. Jack owns an ad agency and is desperately trying to get Pacino to do a commercial for him. Pacino is often the best thing about any movie he’s in – and it’s true here too. If there’s anything good about Jack and Jill, it’s Pacino hamming it up as an eccentric over-the-top version of himself. Perhaps the finest actor of his generation is the funniest thing in an Adam Sandler movie. Go figure.
Pacino is not the only big star to make an appearance. If nothing else, Sandler is well-connected and get some big names to appear in his movies. The rest we won’t give away in this space, because there is some fun to be had spotting them. Some are commercial pitchmen you may or may not recognize, some are former SNL colleagues of who actually are true sketch comic geniuses – and one is a real surprise and may be the best actor of his own generation. And again, this writer can’t believe he is funny in an Adam Sandler movie.
Mentioning Pacino may seem like a spoiler, but his name is in the opening credits even before we see him, so it’s not like we’re supposed to be surprised. He is however absent from all the commercials. Producers may have been personally thrilled to work with him, but maybe they realized that the people who want to see Adam Sandler in a dress probably wouldn’t have cared.