Jack and Jill (2011)

This is the Guy Who’s Gonna do a Dunkin’ Donuts Commercial.

Today’s movie was not a request.  Instead, it sprang forth as a sign of my own self-loathing.  I’m pretty sure that everybody that saw the trailer for this movie knew better than to see it, but I saw it and said “I wanna make fun of that.”  That was, of course, once I had figured out that the trailer wasn’t a joke, like some Funny or Die mock trailer.  When I found out it was a real movie, it was on.  But there was no way in Hell that I was going to the theaters to see it.  Instead, I waited patiently for the moment it popped up in a RedBox near me and called to me.  And now the time has come to talk about Jack and Jill, written by Steve Koren, Robert Smigel, and Adam Sandler, directed by Dennis Dugan, and starring Adam Sandler, Katie Holmes, Al Pacino, Rohan Chand, Elodie Tougne, Eugenio Derbez, Tim Meadows, Nick Swardson, Allen Covert, Valerie Maheffey, Gad Elmaleh, and Gary Valentine, with cameos by Dana Carvey, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Norm MacDonald, Regis Philbin, Shaquille O’Neal, Lamar Odom, Bruce Jenner, Johnny Depp, Drew Carey, Jared Fogle (The Subway Jared), and John McEnroe.

Jack Sadelstein (Adam Sandler) works in advertising and lives with his wife, Erin (Katie Holmes), and his two children, Gary (Rohan Chand) and Sofia (Elodie Tougne).  His twin sister, Jill (don’t make me say it) comes to visit his family for Thanksgiving.  She’s annoying as shit, causing Jack to snap at her occasionally, which causes her to extend her vacation so that she doesn’t leave on a bad note.  Jack is also stressed because his work wants him to get Al Pacino (himself) to do a commercial for Dunkin’ Donuts and their new drink, the Dunkachino.  Luckily for Jack, Al Pacino develops a crush on Jill when they first meet.  But Jill, even though she’s incredibly lonely, is having none of Scarface and his tomfoolery.  That’s when shit gets really crazy.

The truth about this movie is a rather surprising one: It’s not as painfully bad as I expected from the commercials and trailers.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s also not good and not very funny, but it wasn’t PAINFULLY so.  It was just another mediocre Adam Sandler comedy (as he’s prone to making these days) with a shitty premise and a good meaning to it.  The premise of the movie seems like Adam Sandler just found out about the phenomenon of twins, ran into the office of his writing partners, and exclaimed “Did you guys know that two people of different genders can look exactly alike?  I have such the movie for you guys!”  And then it was off and running.  Putting Adam in a dress, having him do a voice we’ve heard him do before for her, and having him play opposite himself like Mike Myers.  And then they needed a conflict.  How about one as original as “siblings don’t get along”?  BRILLIANT!  The whole Al Pacino subplot is original, but many people thought it was insane for Al Pacino to fall in love with a female version of Adam Sandler.  That part I can actually get behind.  Pacino seems that crazy.  Then you tie the whole thing up with some “love your siblings for who they are” mess and you have a movie.  All of this would have been forgivable if they made the movie funny, but they didn’t.  The only part that made me laugh was in one of their cameos.  It’s at the basketball game where Jack is trying to talk to Pacino and Jill doesn’t really know who he, nor the person he’s watching the game with, are.  The only funny part of the movie is when Jill asks the friend (are you listening, Loni?) Johnny Depp if he was in Duran Duran, and Johnny says “Yeah, that was me.”  I’ve just saved you two hours!  Except for Loni, that is, who will now watch this movie just because Johnny Depp is in it for two minutes and has words coming out of his mouth.  The whole movie winds up being thoroughly “blah”, with a few moments that are cute, but just as many moments that are painfully not funny.  Jack’s son, Gary, has some strange habit of taping things to himself that is stupid and completely insane, but they managed to get a little bit of almost funny out if it, like when he tapes a salt shaker to his head and Jill uses the shaker while it’s still on his head.  Near the end of the movie, there’s a part where Jack and Jill show off their fantastic jump roping abilities together that is just painfully not funny.  There’s also an entire scene at the picnic of Jack’s gardener that was so blatantly stereotypical that even I came close to finding it really offensive, and I’m not even Mexican (thank God).

The performances did what they could with what was written, but never really impressed either.  Adam Sandler is probably the most to blame for this movie, having written it and for playing two roles in it.  As Jack, he was mainly just normal, but never really realistic.  As Jill, he was annoying and about as far from realistic as you could get.  The problem for me of making the sister so utterly annoying is that you don’t really sympathize with her when Jack is rude to her.  I would be too!  Al Pacino played himself like I want to imagine him: completely insane.  He had a couple of entertaining parts, like when Jill accidentally broke his Oscar and said, “Oh, I’m sure you have others,” and he said, “You’d think so, but no.”  Maybe it’s because you’re doing movies like Jack and Jill now, and not Godfathers and Scarfaces.  I also found him entertaining at the very end of the movie when he was in a bar dressed as Don Quixote.  I like Tim Meadows, Nick Swardson, Dana Carvey, Norm MacDonald, and David Spade, but none of them really brought any comedy to this beyond David Spade being in drag just like Sandler.  As with most Sandler movies, there are a huge number of cameos in this movie, but none (beyond Johnny Depp) ever did anything for me, it was just interesting that they were there in the first place.

Jack and Jill isn’t as bad as you expect it to be.  It’s just regular bad.  It’s a pretty bad premise to base a movie on, it’s not that great of a story, and the only part I found really funny was delivered by a cameo actor.  I can’t surprise any of you by saying that I recommend you watch this movie, even for a dollar.  You can’t really mock a comedy MST3k style because comedies are already trying to be funny and any joke you’d make would just be “That was dumb.”  That being the case, there’s no reason to see this.  Jack and Jill gets “Busted, disgusted, never to be trusted!” out of “We play games, we eat, we steal white people’s money.”

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Mean Girls (2004)

I Want My Pink Shirt Back!

Yimmy is such a sweetheart.  He has, thus far, been the only person to consistently recommend movies that are actually good.  I have seen today’s movie before, and have heard good things about the movie from pretty much everybody, but I strangely don’t remember thinking that much of it.  It’s weird.  The writer is one of my favorite writers ever, and the movie is filled with pretty girls and people I find funny, but I just couldn’t remember thinking that much of it.  I also have a terrible memory, so we’ll see how it turned out in my review of Mean Girls, written by Tina Fey, directed by Mark Waters, and starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried, Lizzy Caplan, Daniel Franzese, Jonathan Bennett, Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, Neil Flynn, Ana Gasteyer, and Amy Poehler.

Slutty, cokehead, whorebag Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) has been homeschooled in Africa by her parents (Neil Flynn and Ana Gasteyer) for most of her life, but now she must start high school.  Okay, slutty, cokehead, whorebag doesn’t apply to the character.  It’s more for the actress.  But she’s starting high school anyways.  She quickly befriends Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and Damien (Daniel Franzese), who teach her about the social structure of the school, most notably “the Plastics”, lead by Regina George (Rachel McAdams), toaster strudel heiress Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert), and really dumb Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried).  Thinking it would be funny, Janis talks Cady into infiltrating the Plastics in order to destroy them from the inside.  But can Cady become the enemy without losing herself in it?  The answer: Lindsay Lohan loves cocaine!

I think the strangest thing about this movie is that I hate the type of movie, but I like this movie.  It handles exactly like numerous other movies about the new girl having a rough time in school, and the odd girl becoming cool but forgetting who she is, and so many other high school movies.  These movies are pretty played out and cliche and not usually worth watching.  The difference with this movie is that it was written by Tina Fey.  As with most things, having Tina Fey behind it makes it good.  This movie was pretty damned funny.  A little sappy in parts for my tastes, but still enjoyable all the way through.  There are a lot of really solid laughs in this movie, and a couple of things that didn’t make as much sense to me though, in the movie’s defense, I was rarely a girl in high school.  The whole idea of the Burn Book seemed like way too much work to rag on someone that will potentially never see it.  You could just sit around and make fun of them without having to actually buy a book, clip out photos, and paste them in the book with some snarky comment.  I suppose it’s something that high school girls might do, but I am way too lazy to do that.  Words are so much easier.  The other thing that didn’t make sense to me was in the end when Cady is breaking the crown into pieces and giving it to everyone.  The reason it doesn’t make sense to me is that she freakin’ Jesus’d that crown.  Every time she broke it, there was still enough to go around for everyone in the auditorium.  This is totally unbelievable because if Lohan had Jesus powers, you know she’d just be at the water fountain turning it to wine.

The cast is almost entirely great.  I may have already indicated (in the sly, hidden way that I did) that I am not that big of a fan of Lindsay Lohan, but I give her credit for doing pretty well in this movie.  This was probably the best looking she’ll ever be (as I hear meth ruins your teeth), and she also pulled off her comedic and emotional bits very well.  It was super racist and not cool for her to “Jambo” at the black people she saw, and seemed a little out of character.  I mean, I laughed, but I’m a racist.  Also, never really believed Lohan as a math expert.  I understand that there is some math involved with dividing drugs up, but I don’t think that would make you an expert.  I feel a little bad for Rachel McAdams because she’s gorgeous and probably a super nice girl, but she’s also really good at playing a bitch.  I’d like to see her play more sweet girls so I could just fall in love with her.  Of course, it’s not bitchy for her to tell Lohan that she was just a less hot version of her.  That’s just good, solid facts.  I feel extra bad for Lacey Chabert because she is so completely gorgeous as well, and also pulled off the comedy and the parts where she had to cry so well, but she really hasn’t become as mainstream as she should.  She had Not Another Teen Movie, and her one line was pretty hilarious in that, but she needs to be more famous.  They let Kate Hudson ruin so many huge profile comedies and yet Chabert hasn’t really done a big movie since 2004?  Not fair, Hollywood!  The same could be said for Amanda Seyfried, I guess.  She had that one horrible Red Riding Hood movie, but not a lot worth talking about.  Nothing good, but at least they were big.  She was pretty funny in this movie, and easily the sweetest girl in the Plastics because she was so dumb and innocent.  Tina Fey was great in this as well, and quite frankly, arguably the hottest woman in this movie.  I’ll stand by that.  She gets her bra out in the introduction of her character as well, and I’m always down for that.  She has a great deal of funny parts in the movie, but she isn’t in that often.  Tim Meadows kills practically every time he’s on camera as well, but he was a little underused.  He was very put upon in this role, but still very funny.  I love Lizzy Caplan a lot as well, but her character in this was a little too hateful and irritating.  She was sometimes justified, but sometimes you should just move on with your life.  Get a boyfriend, that’ll clear up that whole “lesbian” thing.  I’ll even volunteer!  It’d be way better than ending up with that creepy Mathlete guy!  I didn’t like her gay friend, Daniel Franzese, at first, but the second he called that short girl Danny DeVito, I was in.  Amy Poehler was consistently hilarious as the mom that won’t let go of her youth.  The best thing she did was when she was in the audience, dancing along with her daughter and the other Plastics in their overly-sexy “Jingle Bell Rock” dance.  That made me appreciate it double!  Ana Gasteyer made little to no impact on me as Cady’s mom, but they did give Neil Flynn a couple of funny parts, like when he had no idea that Cady wasn’t supposed to be allowed to leave when she was grounded.  Jonathan Bennett never really did much for me as the object of Cady’s desire.  He wasn’t really around much beyond something to look at, and he got on my nerves with how he reacted when Cady was drunkenly confessing things to him.  Why would you get all pissy that a girl was afraid to talk to you because it would make her friend angry?  That’s fairly normal.  I do understand getting a little upset when she throws up on you, though.  Of course, that’s kind of something you should expect when working with Lohan.

I think I’ve just about run out of Lindsay Lohan jokes.  Mean Girls was an enjoyable watch, and I feel like I enjoyed it much more on this viewing than I had on whichever viewing made me give it two and a half stars on Rotten Tomatoes.  Sure, it’s basic premise is one that is a little played out, and one I don’t usually find that enjoyable, but Tina Fey can make almost anything work.  There are a lot of very solid laughs in this movie, and pretty awesome performances to make those jokes work.  There’s also some good emotion to the movie, and it ends up with a nice message that we probably all expected from the start of the movie, but it’s still very enjoyable.  I rented the movie from Netflix, but it’s not available for streaming.  Next time I want to watch it, I will feel comfortable just going out and purchasing it.  Mean Girls gets “I like this movie like Lindsay Lohan loves heroin” out of “I can’t help it that I’m so popular.”

Hey, peeps. Why not rate and comment on this as a favor to good ole Robert, eh? And tell your friends! Let’s make me famous!