'Jack and Jill' Fails to Conjure Up Twin Magic

That's Adam Sandler...and Adam Sandler and that's more than one too many.

We all have relatives that get on our nerves, but there is a fine line between tolerating someone for their annoyances and having that sudden urge to lock oneself in the room when it’s time for that holiday get-together. Take Jack (Adam Sandler), a commercial director who knows that a peaceful Thanksgiving with his wife Katie Holmes and two children is out of the question.  

Dreading the arrival of his awkward, unattractive and needy twin sister, Jill (also played by Sandler), Jack manages every possible solution to ensure the holidays don’t go up in flames. But what was initially intended to be a quick Thanksgiving stay, extends longer than expected, through Hanukkah and New Years, aggravating Jack to no end.

Whether intentional or not, Sandler develops Jill as an annoying, obnoxious excuse for a character in recent memory. Granted, a drag performance is one that very few comedians can pull off effectively, but Sandler makes a mockery at attempting to shift gender roles.  Jill continuously shifts between annoying, obnoxious, creepy, oblivious and emotionally unstable train wreck. The character wouldn’t be as terrible as it is if Sandler would have studied Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams or Nathan Lane’s roles rather than setting himself up for embarrassment. As a result, every scene where Sandler is on screen as his female counterpart, the film is dragged deeper and deeper into an unfunny abyss. Ironically, the blandness of Sandler as Jack is more entertaining than any second Jill is on screen.     

For its PG rating, Jack and Jill is offensively raunchy on several levels, completely oblivious to whom this film is specifically marketed to. For every one joke about the homeless, Bin Laden or female cramping, there is triple the toilet humor, which will amuse juvenile intellect, but does little to enhance the overall comedy of the film. Humor like this is utterly the lowest common denominator of low-brow even for a movie such as Jack and Jill. And even the slapstick humor stringing this cheaply constructed narrative together, though a slight improvement on the toilet humor or suggestive jokes, still can only elicit a cheap laugh on a rare occurrence.   

Jack and Jill seems like a desperate attempt at a holiday payday by Sandler and company, but they are not alone. The film is littered with cameos from Johnny Depp to Shaq and more prominently Al Pacino, who must be at the end of his rope to even consider being in this film anything more than a few seconds. Playing himself, Pacino takes an interest in Jill, after she has been rejected through social dating services. Seeing Sandler and Pacino romancing one another is more disturbing than could ever be entertaining, but Pacino (the actor, not the character) tackles the moments professionally.

Jack and Jill bookends the narrative with real-life stories of twins, attempting to engage audiences with pathological intention to sympathize with Jack and Jill and the ups and downs that the two go through as twins. Though more interesting than the actual film, it doesn’t take away from the notion that no matter how annoying Sandler as a female is, the character is not redeemable. That may seem harsh, but an entire film of obnoxious behavior from the character is not easily forgivable.

The last twenty minutes are sappy at best and lack closure and satisfaction after endless intellectual abuse. Terribly predictable from beginning to end,  Jack and Jill may be Sandler’s weakest movie to date. Perhaps Sandler would be smart to stay as a guy and only a guy in his next movie.

GRADE: D (2/10)

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