Jack and Jill (2011) - ★★

Director: Dennis Dugan
Writers: Steve Koran, Adam Sandler (Screenplay), Ben Zook (Story)
Stars: Adam Sandler, Al Pacino, Katie Holmes, David Spade, Nick Swardson, Tim Meadows, Eugenio Derbez

I can't help but smile at the thought of everyone being miserable while watching this movie. For some reason, I wasn't miserable. In fact, I laughed quite a few times! Jack and Jill is pretty despicable, relying on cheap humour, fart jokes, racial jokes, and bucket loads of product placement. The thing is, I'm not above this sort of humour if it's done right. There were so many jokes that fell flat, but there were quite a few of them that made me roar with laughter. I'm probably losing all credibility as a reviewer right now, but if I'm being honest, I enjoyed this movie.

Jack (Adam Sandler) is an advertising manager (or something) that makes commercials starring celebrities. The big account that he needs to land is to get Al Pacino to star in a Dunkin Donuts commercial. His annoying and zany twin sister, Jill (Adam Sandler), comes over to stay for a few days. They do typical wild, crazy stuff together... but Jill keeps putting off leaving. Meanwhile, Al Pacino has fallen in love with Jill... it's pretty bad stuff I know. Can you believe this whole thing cost $79,000,000? I reckon a lot of that probably went on Al Pacino getting a cameo.

Basically, this sort of humour has zero wit and charm. It's a pretty lazy film, resulting in hardly any originality and tons of standard jokes. At times it was 'so bad it's funny.' Other times it was just plain funny. I think a third of this film fell flat though, mostly with the Al Pacino appearances and the sappy heartfelt schmaltz that they injected into it. I especially wasn't a huge fan of the Mexican gardener, who kept making jokes like "Our family and I are having a get together, we steal white people's wallets... JUST KIDDING." That's not funny. Even I had to double take after that, it just made me cringe.

Red Letter Media hit the nail on the head by unveiling the scam that is the Adam Sandler empire. He used tons of product placement throughout the film (the most obvious being Dunkin Donuts and Caribbean Cruises). When he rakes in all the money, he distributes it amongst friends like Pacino, Spade, and whatever other buddies he usually uses in his movies. That would explain the $79,000,000 budget that was used up. I can't think of anything else that money was spent on, because really the whole thing looked kind of cheap.

Yet, I still enjoyed this movie. There's a huge bandwagon going around about how this is "The worst movie of all time." Wow, now that's a huge exaggeration. I think there were redeemable qualities in Jack and Jill... my main one being that it made me laugh. I'd have to say that my favorite thing in the whole movie was when David Spade was dressed in drag, playing a slutty bitch from the Bronx... Anyway, I couldn't possibly recommend this to anyone. I think some people may be surprised at how much they laugh at it though.