JACK AND JILL

JACK AND JILL

Families can use this film to test the limits of their child's humor relating to stupidity. And if you didn't get enough product placement from "Zookeeper," you'll receive a barrage of it from "Jack and Jill." If you're one of those moviegoers that says, "Oh my gosh! They got THAT guy to be in this movie? That is just TOO funny!", you’re about to have the best time of your life, at the expense of everyone, and your brain cells.

Adam Sandler plays Jack, a TV commercial director with a nice house, loving kids, and a supportive wife (played by Katie Holmes). As someone working in the advertising industry, Jack is bestowed with a big problem: he has to find a way to convince movie star Al Pacino to appear in a ridiculous ad for a donut enterprise.

Enter his twin Jill, (also played by Sandler), who visits Jack and his family for Thanksgiving. Jill is the opposite of Jack; she's technologically inept, extremely loud, and a huge drama queen.

When Jack takes Jill to a basketball game, Jill catches the eye of Al Pacino, which starts a romance that Jack tries to use to his advantage to finally bring his commercial to life.

The once-funny Sandler astounds audiences with the ability to show that not only does he lack comedic presence when dressed as himself, but he is also the worst voice actor in Hollywood (his "squawking" monkey in "Zookeeper" further rubs this in our face). Quite possibly, Jack is a meta version of Sandler - a regular schlub with a job selling his soul to shitty products who has a lot of famous friends (Regis Philbin, etc.) who will appear in his commercials. (It should be noted that Jack works in the most cliche occupation in film: an advertising agency).

His sister Jill is played as a stereotypical New Yorker, and is given one physical feature outside of actual appearance that makes her different from Jack: a nightmarish Bronx accent.

This isn't exactly like casting Nicolas Cage in "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" because Pacino's attempt at lampooning his recent descent into laughable territory has now even lost the laughs. It's not like his presence is surprising - now Daniel Day Lewis, that would be surprising - because he's in the same sinking boat in the river of shit with Sandler, who resorts to paddling along Hollywood box office terrain by simply playing himself.

Here’s Katie Holmes' character description in this movie: "is wife." Erin is in this story to encourage Jack to love his sister, and to more importantly, get Jack to do things that will allow the story to progress. Consider this the most intense "cameo" in the movie, as Pacino is a flat-out instrument to this disaster.

A parrot is used more than once to reiterate the things that Jill says, which is a comedic trick that should be punishable by death in 2011. The script lazily uses dialogue to fill in cracks of exposition. For example, when Jill is upset and runs into the woods to sleep amongst the trees, she screams out, "I'm going to sleep into the woods!"

The ONLY positive attribute of the entirety of "Jack and Jill" is the blocking. Meaning, the placement of the two Sandlers, in the manner in which he is filmed, does allow us to feel that Jill is not just Jack in drag. "Jack and Jill's" laziness can only be avoided so far, however, as it does feature plenty of shots in which the two are on both sides of the frame, which is one of the simpler ways to include both Sandler incarnations without breaking too much of a sweat. (This is definitely not the same freakish technology was utilized to create the Winklevii in "The Social Network".)

It's quite fair to say that Adam Sandler hasn't worked a day in his life after meta-declaring himself "dying" in Judd Apatow's "Funny People." Since then, Sandler has been on vacation, wearing over-sized t-shirts and calling upon various friends (from both the Happy Madison entourage and Hollywood's yester-years) to fill in roles as either cameos or full supporting sidekicks. Who else would hire Rob Schneider for a movie like "Grown Ups," or give Al Pacino the "opportunity" of admitting that he'll definitely never do anything great again?

Sandler pays for such vacations ("Grown Ups," "Just Go With It," and now this) with egregious product placement, with "Jack and Jill" taking the shame cake for the worst I've seen this year (worst than "Zookeeper," which featured a prominent fake orgy of fun at a restaurant named after a day).

Certain products are given aggressive placement in his movie by obviously facing beer bottles etc., or even more horrendous, an actual "cameo" by a product's spokesperson himself. (I will not give the companies a crumb of satisfaction by naming them.) A scene involving Al Pacino rapping in the name of one company might top the dancing sequence in "Mac and Me" for being most evil moment in all of movie marketing.

"Jack and Jill," finds Adam Sandler and his twin sister going to a movie, a basketball game, and then on a cruise. Only a shill like Adam Sandler could confuse fun for total misery.

"Jack and Jill," as its own vacation in the Sandler travel book, is an astonishingly lazy movie that doesn't care to make any of its characters likable, or to even give them creative names as twins, for that matter. It relies heavily on the low expectations of its audience regarding Sandler, and manages to slug along way, way below that. -- NICK ALLEN, is also a film critic for The Scorecard Review and member of Chicago Film Critics Association

NICK ALLEN

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