Jack and Jill

JACK AND JILL (Dennis Dugan, 2011)

In the comedy JACK AND JILL Adam Sandler pulls double duty starring as Los Angeles advertising executive Jack and his insecure, Bronx-dwelling twin sister Jill.  Even before Jill’s plane has landed in California for her Thanksgiving visit, Jack is counting the hours until she is on a return flight to New York.  He loves his sister, but she gets on his nerves.

To Jack’s exasperation, Jill decides to extend her stay with his family through Hanukkah.  Desperate to get her out of the house and back to the East Coast, Jack figures that the best way to hasten her departure is to find a boyfriend for his sad, single sister.  Luckily and bewilderingly, Al Pacino is smitten with Jill.  This appears to be a coup for Jack, as he might have found a boyfriend for Jill and now has the chance to persuade the actor to star in his pitch for a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial.  Jill, though, is less than impressed with Pacino’s fame, fortune, and affection.  

I’ve rarely liked Sandler’s films, especially when he’s working with someone from his stable of directors.  His laziness and worst impulses are left unchecked, allowing the films to disintegrate into formless and laughless vehicles for product placement, ego stroking, and paid vacation.  This year’s Sandler-starring, Dennis Dugan-directed JUST GO WITH IT is a shoo-in for my worst of 2011 list.  With JACK AND JILL bringing the star and director together again, everything was aligned for me to hate it as well. Strangely, I don’t.

JACK AND JILL certainly suffers from the problems that plague his other movies. Dugan’s filmmaking demonstrates a basic level of formal competence, which is an improvement in this instance.  The corporate contributors are so nakedly integrated that Sandler might as well just pause to show commercials at the act breaks.  At this point it’d be less insulting.  (That said, JACK AND JILL basically does this near the end.)  The immense neediness Sandler’s characters possess gets shifted to him in Jill’s clothes rather than as “himself”, which at least makes it less alienating.  Still, the underlying message remains unconcealed: love me for and in spite of all of these things I hate about myself.  

Yet JACK AND JILL yielded more laughs from me than any of his films have in the last seven years.  Is Pacino’s utterly weird performance captivating because he’s debasing himself or giving it his all?  Maybe I’ve finally been worn down, but Jill’s grotesque characterization goes in one end as deeply unfunny and comes out the other as relatively amusing and, dare I say it, charming.  Her enthusiastic requests for twin time with Jack and general cluelessness let Sandler play up the lowbrow comedy he favors without being as mean or angry as he can be.

The charge is leveled at Jack that he’s bitter and cynical, which seems like a pointed self-critique for Sandler to acknowledge.  Like the actor’s least ambitious films, JACK AND JILL’s lack of energy disguises contempt, but here he’s working through his issues in a more compelling way than usual.

Grade:  C

88 Minutes

88 MINUTES (Jon Avnet, 2007)

Nine years after forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jack Gramm (Al Pacino) provided crucial testimony in the conviction of serial killer Jon Forster (Neal McDonough), the verdict begins to be called into question. In 88 MINUTES a murder replicating the methods of the old crimes suggests that perhaps Forster was wrongly imprisoned.

The timing is of extreme importance since the killing comes on the eve of Forster's scheduled execution. Clues at the new murder scene open the possibility that Gramm himself is the culprit. Meanwhile, a mysterious caller informs Gramm that he has two minutes shy of an hour and a half left to live and sends him running around Seattle to stay alive and solve the crime.

88 MINUTES is the sort of overblown thriller in which every action, no matter how insignificant, is pregnant with portent, yet it's a film of nothing but red herrings. Director Jon Avnet and screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson have concocted a silly mystery that gets more outrageous and laughable as the clock ticks down to the zero minute.

Again and again 88 MINUTES torpedoes suspicion regarding Gramm and loses internal consistency. Since multiple attempts to kill Gramm occur long before time is up, it's abundantly clear that he is not guilty of what has been set up and that the film's countdown device doesn't matter at all.

The decisions made in 88 MINUTES never make any sense. When the abusive former boyfriend of Gramm's teaching assistant Kim (Alicia Witt) appears with a gun at his front door, she tells her boss to open it because the guy wouldn't hurt her. Never mind that he used to beat her and is thought to be out to kill Gramm. Sure, come on in and make yourself at home!

Equally as implausible as the conspiracy to frame Gramm is how every woman in the the film throws herself at him as though the old professor is America's heartthrob. Leave it to the movies to make it so all females are rendered powerless by the unexplained pull of his erotic magnetism.

The portrayal of Gramm's irresistibility verges on parody. That farcical quality can also be read in 88 MINUTES' preposterous mystery. Unfortunately for the filmmakers, they didn't set out to make a comedy.

Grade: D