Presented with the spectacle of Al Pacino -- excuse me, Al Freakin' Pacino -- playing a desperate version of himself, a great actor tempted to sell out after a public tantrum is widely circulated, it would be wonderful to say that he's poking fun at current notions of celebrity and fame. But the reality within the context of Jack and Jill, an exercise in product placement masquerading as a movie, is that Pacino is essaying a weak talk-show version of "Al Pacino," a character that any third-rate impersonator could comfortably handle.
As far as that goes, all of the actors in Jack and Jill could just as well use their real names and pretend to be fictional versions of themselves, because the script, credited on-screen to Steve Koren and Adam Sandler, doesn't bother creating characters. Sandler plays a director of television commercials, which explains why he lives a luxurious lifestyle, but mostly provides easy rationale for littering the dialogue and production design with more product placement than Morgan Spurlock could ever hope to obtain.
Dennis Dugan, Sandler's longtime colloborator, directs in brisk, workmanlike fashion, utilizing the skills of Dean Cundey as director of photography. Once upon a time, Cundey did beautiful work on a low budget, coming to prominence because of his work with John Carpenter, starting with Halloween, then with Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, and even with Steven Spielberg (Hook and Jurassic Park). The man is extremely talented and capable of creating beautiful imagery, so seeing his name attached to a film that is so bright and flatly lit is dispiriting. He's doing what he's asked to do, reflecting the Sandler/Dugan aesthetic of 'fast and cheap,' 'no one cares what it looks like,' but it's still sad to see.
And that's true of Pacino as well. This is the latter-day Pacino, the Pacino that has already been battling the demons of self-parody in his performances, and so to see him here feels less like he's spoofing himself, and more like he may not know the difference anymore. With that being said, he does what he can with the material, but his talents have never lent themselves to comedy, and that's true in Jack and Jill as well.
Adam Sandler's sense of humor has been delighting millions of people for more than 20 years, but I've never been a big fan, and his films have become increasingly lazy, routine, and reliant on old jokes in recent years. If you don't find the sight of him dressed up as a 'woman' to be instantly hilarious, Jack and Jill will prove to be a very long 90 minutes or so. Just to give you a taste of the dialogue that passes as "jokes," here are some of lines repeated and comments expressed by the gentleman sitting next to me at a preview screening the other night; each comment expressed was followed by a loud guffaw, and is presented without context, which the movie seldom provides anyway:
"She's eating a Reuben!"
"To cool off!"
"She's in the bathroom!"
"He's just staring at her!"
"Her number?!"
To be fair, I did laugh when Sander's adopted Indian son delivered a pearl of comic wisdom with deadpan accuracy: "What are you going to wear, Daddy .... in Hell?!!!"
For the record, Katie Holmes plays Sandler's wife, and a number of Sandler's friends also appear in small roles: Norm MacDonald, Dana Carvey, Regis Philbin, Nick Swardson, Tim Meadows, and David Spade. There's also a cameo by an A-list celebrity, but I won't spoil that by identifying the celebrity. If you're a die-hard Sandler fan, you deserve that much.
Jack and Jill opens wide across the U.S. today. Check local listings for theaters and showtimes.