Jack and Jill

Two years ago, Adam Sandler starred in writer-director Judd Apatow’s rib-tickling comedy-drama “Funny People.” In “Funny People,” Sandler played a successful fortysomething comedian who had sold himself out to the Hollywood system and was now starring in hopelessly dumb, schlocky comedies; for example, one film that was briefly shown had Sandler’s character playing a hideous man-baby (a baby boy with the head of a fully-grown male). Obviously, this was intended by Apatow to be a mockery of the idiotic, big-budget studio comedies Hollywood is known to churn out nowadays; it was a sharp, albeit simple, piece of satire heightened by the involvement of Sandler, who in the real world had also latched onto crappy comedies of this sort.

However, it seems Sandler is determined to become a parody of himself not only on the big screen but also in real life. You see, his latest movie, “Jack and Jill,” is a film so bad, so stupid and so utterly insulting that it’s almost as if one of the fake movies from “Funny People” burst out from the screen, landed in the real world and somehow managed to gain a wide theatrical release for mass public consumption; the fact that this is not the case – i.e. a crew of professional filmmakers actually made this film – is absolutely horrifying.

“Jack and Jill” is yet another movie – scratch that, product – from Sandler’s very own production company, Happy Madison Productions. It also marks the seventh collaboration between Sandler and his usual director, Dennis Dugan, who together have given us such unforgettable comedy classics as “Grown Ups,” “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” and “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.” If that’s not an indication to avoid this film at all costs, I don’t know what is.

Their latest film, another comedy, contains one joke; this joke is that Adam Sandler is playing his own sister. Actually, hold the phone, the film has two jokes: Adam Sandler is playing his own sister, and the sister is very annoying. These two jokes, thin as they may be, are stretched out way beyond their limitations to 90 painful minutes of mind-numbing “comedy,” much more than the two to three minutes they deserve on a bad episode of Saturday Night Live – indeed, Sandler’s old SNL buddies all get their own cameos in the film, including David Spade, who plays a much more convincing woman in the film than Sandler.

The plot, if you can call it that, is as follows. Jack (Sandler) has a twin sister named Jill (Sandler in a dress and wig and putting on a lady voice, LOL). Jill flies all the way to Jack’s ridiculously fancy house for Thanksgiving. Jack doesn’t like Jill. Jill is very annoying. Jill does stupid things that annoy Jack. Jill stays at Jack’s house longer than she intended on.  Jack becomes mad. Jill accidentally becomes romantically involved with Al Pacino (yes, Al Pacino from “The Godfather”), with whom Jack wishes to do a business deal. Jack decides to keep them together until the deal is done, but Jill, for some strange reason, doesn’t want to go out with Al Pacino. Jack becomes mad. Jill continues to be annoying. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Throughout these 90 minutes of pitiless torture, we watch as Jack becomes increasingly frustrated with Jill’s behaviour, which stretches from social idiocy (talking on her mobile phone in a movie theatre) to cultural ignorance (adamant that “It’s a Wonderful Life” is not called “It’s a Wonderful Life”). This concept has worked in films before – for instance, there’s the hysterical 1991 Frank Oz-directed comedy “What About Bob?” in which an egotistical psychiatrist is driven mad by the actions of one of his patients, a lovable, accident-prone and incessantly intrusive goof who is a very entertaining and genuinely hilarious character.

This is opposed to “Jack and Jill,” throughout which we, as an audience, are as frustrated by Jill’s behaviour as Jack is; the character of Jill is not likable, funny or entertaining, instead obnoxious as hell, tediously unfunny and absolutely insufferable to watch. We are not entertained by Jill; we are irritated by her, and every second she spends on-screen is a second we feel we could spend doing something much more productive – clubbing baby seals, for example.

The film also manages to be incredibly insulting to its audience. For starters, the comedy on display is deplorable bottom-of-the-barrel kind of stuff, chock-a-block with witless, brain-dead humour that probably wouldn’t even appeal to your average three-year-old. For example, we have an old Mexican lady getting thwacked in the face (which occurs twice in the same scene), a Shetland pony having its legs crushed under the weight of Jill (which doesn’t make much sense, as Jill really isn’t very fat, but hey, who cares?), Jack’s gardener being a Mexican who constantly jokes about being Mexican (LOL, he’s Mexican), and the always-reliable sound of characters passing gas (I counted this occurring 11 times throughout the film). If I were an Adam Sandler fan, I’m sure I’d feel insulted that Sandler felt this was what I wanted out of a comedy; even as a non-fan, I still felt insulted.

And then there’s the amusingly unsubtle product placement that constantly pops up on-screen, with the film starting and ending with two full-length commercials (one for Pepto-Bismol, the other for Dunkin’ Donuts). This is because the character of Jack rather conveniently works as an advertising executive, and part of the plot of the film is that he wants Al Pacino to do a commercial for Dunkin’ Donuts (because “Dunk-A-Chino,” one of the company’s new products, sounds like “Al Pacino”). Also, if you go and see this “film” (though I don’t know why you would) look out for the scene in which Jack and Jill go to the cinema together and point their snacks in such a direction that the Coca Cola logos printed on the packaging are in the perfect position for the camera to see; you shouldn’t really miss it, as director Dennis Dugan makes sure you don’t.

I’m hesitant to even call “Jack and Jill” a film; I see it more as a 90-minute Dunkin’ Donuts commercial consisting entirely of a series of unfunny comedic events revolving around exasperating recurring characters bereft of any sense of personality or motivation. Nonetheless, it has received a theatrical release and will no doubt earn a hefty sum of money, undeserved as every penny it earns may be. As a reviewer, all I can do is warn you not to see the film, which, at this point at least, stands as the worst and laziest film of 2011; I’d also like to point out that I found it more unbearable than “The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence).” Anyway, I have to go as I’m off to get myself some Dunkin’ Donuts and a swig of Coca Cola, or, perhaps more appropriately, some Pepto-Bismol.

0/10