Jack and Jill

I like comedy when it is funny. I have to admit though, apart from Punch Drunk Love, Reign Over Me, Spanglish, The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates and Happy Gilmore I have never liked Adam Sandler. I often find his acting style irritating, his characters unlikeable and apart from five or six exceptions his films poorly written with not much point to them.

As much as I didn't think much of Little Nicky, You Don't Mess With the Zohan, Funny People and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry(generally Anger Management, The Longest Yard, Click and The Waterboy I had mixed feelings on) neither of them are as painful to watch as this one. The trailer was enough to make me wish the ground had swallowed me up, and the film managed to be every bit as bad.

So why did I see Jack and Jill in the first place if I didn't like Sandler? One reason really. Al Pacino. I consider this man a great actor, and this is not just The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, Scent of a Woman and Carlito's Way as I consider his performance in Godfather Part II one of the all-time great male performances.

When I saw the movie on Tinyurl, having an inkling it would be bad but Pacino would be at least decent, in my opinion this is as awful as I was hearing. This is not just Adam Sandler's worst film, but also one of the worst of the year and one of the worst I've seen recently.

Jack and Jill is a cheap-looking movie, with not much attention to slick editing or continuity and the lighting also manages to be dull. Of Sandler's movies, Jack and Jill is perhaps the worst-directed, because the director throughout seemed to be rushing through it. The soundtrack at best is forgettable, and doesn't seem dynamic with what's going on on screen.

The acting is awful. Adam Sandler is a big part of the film's problem. None of his characters are likable, instead they are very annoying and Sandler's performance is samey and irritating throughout. Not only that, Jill is introduced too quickly with a severe lack of build-ups, and Sandler as a woman in all honesty is not pretty, sorry I had to say.

I was hoping that Al Pacino would elevate just a little bit, as he was the only redeeming quality of Gigli, another example of a bad film. Alas, he spends the entire movie looking bored, almost as if what am I doing here, and the performance reads very much of him playing himself. The cameos don't engage either, they are not funny, in fact pretty much nobody seems to have a sense of comic timing, and just come and go. Nicky Swardson fares best, surprising seeing as I don't regard him very highly either.

Worse are the script, characters and story. In regards to the script and the humour, Jack and Jill fails utterly. The dialogue is atrocious, very immature and hackneyed, while the physical and visual humour just left a bad taste in the mouth. I get that it was meant to be funny and not to be exactly subtle, but the poop jokes for example got really embarrassing and left me more disgusted than amused.

Story-wise, Jack and Jill lacks any kind of structure, it all feels very broken and rushed. As for the characters, they are either annoying, shallow or both, I finished the film not only not caring for them but also forgetting them.

All in all, Sandler's worst movie and one of the worst(I think only Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star, a movie I saw out of curiosity with little else to do, was worse) of a very hit-and-miss year. 0/10 Bethany Cox

The standard that Adam Sandler movies has set is pretty low, but even with such low expectations going to the movie, the movie still felt terrible. The gag is twins and ignoring that healthy identical twins with different genders is impossible, we get to see Adam Sandler dress up as a woman. And, we get to see Adam Sandler dress up as a woman a lot, ridiculously lot and so much so, that Jack Adam Sandler and the rest of the cast are just supporting actors to the almighty squawking of Jill Adam Sandler.

We could say this is just Adam Sandler up to his usual antics but Jill Adam Sandler hogs up the screen time and nothing about her really makes any sort of logical sense. There is Al Pacino as himself who falls for Jill, a possibility that the writers explain away as madness or nervous breakdown of Al Pacino. Then, there is Jill who is loved by the kids and Jack's wife Erin (played by Katie Holmes) for reasons that Jill doesn't portray on screen and we are never shown, all we are shown is the mean and manipulative Jill. The Jill that Adam Sandler portrays is his own immature rendition of a woman, filled with toilet humor and displays of uncharacteristic skills and strength as positive attributes. Jill is portrayed uninteresting and vacuous though written differently, and that being the center of the movie makes the movie uninteresting and tiresome.

The movie would have been an acceptable Sandler movie if Jill had been played by a woman who could actually portray a big heart. The previous Sandler movies were enjoyable movies, but Jack and Jill is a real stinker, barely watchable. The only thing I found interesting was the background opulence of everyone around, thrown around so casually that it really feels like the big guys involved in the movie have severely lost touch with their audience and given way to sloth where they think anything they do is magical. Avoid the movie.

Is it me, or are Adam Sandler movies getting stupider with each passing one? Oh sure, Sandler's sense of humor has been pretty dumb from the beginning, sometimes in an enjoyable way. But lately, his movies seem to be reaching for a lower form of humor than I even knew existed. I'm guessing it won't take long until we get a movie comprised of nothing but Sandler sitting on the toilet and belching for 90 minutes straight.

But, I'm here to talk about Jack and Jill, a stupefyingly dumb comedy that places Sandler in a dual role as both an uptight ad executive and family man, as well as his loud, obnoxious sister. The movie was a miscalculation from the start. Seeing Sandler dressed in drag and talking in a whiny voice probably would have been pushing it in a three minute sketch back in his Saturday Night Live days. In a 90 minute movie, the performance is excruciating. Was there no one around to stop him and tell him the performance, and the character in general, was just a bad idea? No one to say that it just wasn't funny? Seeing a movie like this makes you want to sit Sandler down, and make him watch his performances in Punch Drunk Love, Spanglish, Funny People, and Reign Over Me to remind him that he is so much better than this.

The plot (such as it is) concerns Jill (the sister) coming to visit her brother Jack and his family for Thanksgiving. She's only supposed to be there for a few days, but she extends her vacation time, and winds up staying almost to New Years. During that time, we get a lot of toilet humor (much more than a PG-rated comedy aimed at kids needs), a ton of product placements (How much did Dunkin' Donuts pay to get their brand worked into the plot of the movie? And would it have been better for business if they had just stayed out of the movie all together?), and a lot of celebrity cameos that include Sandler's friends, as well as some big names cashing a paycheck. The cameos in this film include David Spade (in drag, no less), Dana Carvey, Johnny Depp, Regis Philbin, John McEnroe, Shaquille O'Neal, Drew Carey, Christie Brinkley, and Bruce Jenner. Oh, and then there's Al Pacino.

Yes, I said Al Pacino. Only he's not making a cameo, he's a main supporting character. He plays a caricature of himself as a raving oddball who speaks gibberish in order to fool people he can speak other languages, and becomes inexplicably attracted to Jill when he happens to meet her at a basketball game. Jill has no interest in Pacino, but Jack's ad agency wants to hire the actor for a Dunkin' Donut campaign, so he tries to bring the two together. When Jill further resists, Jack is forced to dress up as his sister and be seduced by Pacino. But never mind. The important thing is Pacino gets the film's only laughs, because he tackles the material head-on and with full passion. He obviously knows this material is stupid, but he gives such an energetic performance, you sometimes find yourself laughing, even if what he says isn't that funny. Say what you will about his decision to appear in this movie, but he earns every cent of that paycheck when he appears in trash like this.

Outside of Pacino's off the wall performance, I can't say I laughed very much at Jack and Jill. The movie's just not that funny. Don't tell that to the guy who was sitting two rows behind me at my screening, though. Every tired pratfall, every loud fart that blasted on the soundtrack, and every knock to the head caused him to erupt in extremely loud fits of laughter, stomping of feet, and slapping his knees. I wanted to ask him what he found so funny about the movie. Most of all, I wanted to be enjoying myself as much as he was. That's obviously the intention of the movie. It wants to make us laugh and forget our problems for 90 minutes or so. That's admirable. But it fails on both counts. My guess as to the reaction of the man sitting behind me? He's been locked away somewhere for a very long time, and has never seen a movie in his life.

I won't go so far as to say that Jack and Jill is the worst comedy of the year, as there's much worse out there. But, it's certainly one of the most annoying. This is the kind of movie where the filmmakers started with the idea of Sandler playing brother and sister, and then stopped there, not developing the screenplay, characters, or the jokes. Considering that the initial idea wasn't that hot to start with, maybe they shouldn't have even gone as far as they did.

I sincerely wish I could erase this film from my memory. I love Adam Sandler, and yes, he's had a couple of bad films but this one is so bad I believe his career might actually end because of it.

The constant shrieking of Jill is unbearable, and were we really meant to take Sandler's female character seriously? Or was this film only meant to be "funny" because Sandler's in drag? I've still not figured that out, and I don't think I'll devote much more time to doing so.

This film led me to create my IMDb account because if what I've said here can keep even one person from paying to see it then I feel it will have been worth writing.

Cheers.

I will start by saying that I have enjoyed many Adam Sandler movies and have found him to be a generally funny guy when I've seen him interviewed and when he was on Saturday Night Live.

I laughed gleefully through Anger Management, Mr. Deeds, Billy Madison, 50 First Dates, and Happy Gilmore. Funny People and Just Go With It were awesome movies! I was brought to tears in Sandler's emotional portrayal in Reign Over Me.

I have great respect for the man as a comedian and actor. But Jack and Jill is abysmal. The "jokes" are not only bizarrely misplaced - THEY ARE NOT FUNNY. I did not hear a single laugh, not even a slight giggle from any audience member in the theater. In fact, almost 1/3 of them walked out before it was over. Those who stayed, openly derided the flick as we all exited the theater in utter disgust and sadness.

I don't know why Al Pacino was in this movie, his acting made it seem like he was forced at gun point to do this movie. Nick Swardson and Tim Meadows are way too funny to be in such a disaster. Especially given Swardson's stellar performance in Just Go With It.

This movie is not a flop, its not an "oops", its not a mistake - it's a career ending pile of trash. A career ender that started with Sandler's god awful "Grown Ups" and climaxes with this revolting hunk of garbage.

Sorry Adam, it's over.