Sandler and co guilty of a nursery crime (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Sandler and co guilty of a nursery crime

9:15am Friday 3rd February 2012 in Film Reviews By Damon Smith

JACK AND JILL (PG, 90 mins) ** Starring Adam Sandler, Katie Holmes, Al Pacino, Elodie Tougne, Rohan Chand, Eugenio Derbez, David Spade, Nick Swardson. Director: Dennis Dugan

In the nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill went up a hill and took a tumble as they fetched a pail of water.

Following their lead, Oscar winner Al Pacino falls horribly from grace playing an exaggerated version of himself in a grotesque comedy that casts Adam Sandler as a Los Angeles advertising guru and his crass twin sister.

Two Sandlers for the price of one means twice the mean-spirited barbs, twice the toilet humour and twice the grating on-screen laughter at an offensive selection of ethnic stereotypes and sexist sneers.

With sharper writing, Jack And Jill might have been a sweetly entertaining tale of estranged siblings reuniting in middle age.

Alas, that isn’t Sandler’s shtick – he plumbs the murky depths of human behaviour, revelling in the uncomfortable moments when characters are reduced to their base instincts.

It’s mind-boggling that an actor of Pacino’s stature would align himself with such a vulgar farrago but to give the 71-year-old credit, he brings more intensity to his part than the rest of the cast combined.

Ad man Jack Sadelstein (Sandler) lives with wife Erin (Katie Holmes), their daughter Sofia (Elodie Tougne) and adopted son Gary (Rohan Chand).

Every Thanksgiving, Jack braces himself for the arrival of twin sister Jill (Sandler again), who has a complete lack of social graces.

The ad executive can’t wait to be rid of her, until his sibling becomes useful.

Jack hopes to persuade Al Pacino to star in a commercial for a new type of coffee from a well-known chain of doughnut shops.

Jack And Jill has little to recommend it besides Pacino’s insane commitment to such poor material.

It’s a toss up which incarnation of Sandler is more irritating, Holmes is vacuous eye candy and the film’s ugly humour is dredged from the sewers of bad taste and political incorrectness.