All told, Jack and Jill — in which Adam Sandler (Zookeeper) plays both the titular Jack and his twin sister Jill — will join the shortlist of great gender-bending musicals and comedies, among such notable acolytes as The Rocky Horror Picture Show; The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Wait, that’s wrong, I seem to have mixed up my review there.
Jack and Jill is the crowning cinematic achievement of Sandler-owned production studio and comedy giant Happy Madison Productions, which for years has made nothing but hilarious, top-class, highbrow comedies of worth.
Well, no, that’s completely wrong, too. Let’s try again.
Jack and Jill is one of those movies that is so utterly shocking and depraved in its indifference to human enjoyment that allowing children to see it — and therefore allowing them to lower their expectations for film as an art form — should be a crime.
Then again, given director Dennis Dugan’s consistency in turning a profit by directing some of the worst movies of the new millennium — including You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and Grown Ups — perhaps Jack and Jill is bad for a good reason. Perhaps it is meant as Dugan’s metafictional breakthrough artistic statement.
The film is so obscenely horrendous that it had to have been purposeful. Perhaps Jack and Jill is Dugan’s magnum opus — a perfectly crafted piece of satire designed to show how far into unabashed awfulness modern film can sink.
Wrong again?
More likely, Jack and Jill is every lost episode of Saturday Night Live filmed when Sandler was a member of the cast. The film features one terrible sketch after another, most of which feel unconnected and culminate in a punch line where anyone from John McEnroe to Johnny Depp (The Rum Diary) to the ShamWow guy might walk out for a cameo (seriously, the real ShamWow guy, Vince Offer).
Granted, guest spots from the likes of Shaquille O’Neal (Scary Movie 4) and Drew Carey (Robots) are among the “best” moments in the film, but the fact that the writing relies entirely on shock cameos and people getting punched in the face shows a level of laziness equal only to that of the poor sloth victim in Se7en.
The comedy in this film is so brain-dead that every passing moment relieves the viewer of one more point on the IQ scale. About an hour into the movie, your mind will enter a surreal coma and suddenly Jill’s sweat stains, twins performing double dutch and a canary bathing in a chocolate fountain will become funny.
Maybe I’m wrong again, and you’ll all just be laughing for all the wrong reasons. This mad rush of absurd imagery is so overwhelming that it’s nearly impossible to turn away from the slow, insistent train wreck.
At its darkest, Jack and Jill is an hour-and-a-half introduction to a 32-second commercial for Dunkin’ Donuts starring a dancing Al Pacino (The Son of No One), who had already thrown away his illustrious career by playing an antagonistic version of himself for the first agonizing 90 minutes.
Anyone forced to watch this atrocity will be dumber for having seen it. I award it no points, and may God have mercy on Sandler’s soul.
VERDICT: Jack and Jill is the first sign of humanity’s end times. It will burn the brightest of all during the apocalypse.
