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
