I have devoted more of weekend than is healthy to the Adam Sandler film "Jack and Jill". I am not a fan of Adam Sandler's work, but I had heard this was a particularly bad example of his work and the good thing about Lovefilm is that you can order something rubbish, watch it and send it back at very little expense. I had quite enjoyed Sandler in "Funny People" though even that film became a bit sprawling and confused, but he was playing a character that like himself appeared in various terrible films and had lost his way as a person. There were trailers mocked up for some of the character's work -
here's a good example. Sandler is very funny in this, watch the way he delivers the line "I didn't mean this young" - it's perfectly pitched. It's a great moment of self-parody.
Jack and Jill would not be a good enough shit idea to make it into "Funny People" as a parody. It really is just awful from start to finish. I watched it when I was drunk, setting myself the challenge of how far I could get through it. Luckily my drunkenness and the fact I was tweeting about the film meant that there's vast swathes of it that I can't remember. Also the disc was a little bit dirty (as it had been handled by Adam Sandler fans) and skipped a couple of times. Usually I would have stopped the film and cleaned it, but this time it felt like I had caught a break.
Having watched the entire confused and weird and pointless film I then had a look at the deleted scenes -incredible to think that there might be anything committed to film that the director thought was of too low quality to be included in the movie. The whole thing feels like they just kept filming until they had 90 minutes (even then padding it all out with a "When Harry Met Sally" rip-off of having "real-life" interviews with actual twins bookending the film - the final shot is one of the twins doing a quite lame party piece bit of physical comedy, really giving the feeling of "let's put anything into this film that we can find").
I got through two deleted scenes before my resolved failed. I had come this far and was so close to the finish line, but I couldn't go on. When you think of all the writers and performers struggling to get their scripts made it is somewhat sickening to know that this lazy piece of half-thought out rubbish exists. You would hope that anyone in the position to get anything they wanted actually made would at least have the respect to try and put a bit of effort into it. Adam Sandler "wrote" this film too. My guess is that he is not the kind of writer who sits at his desk unable to write anything for fear that it's not good enough. I think he sits down, types for two hours (pretty much in real time) and then whatever he has got by then is the shooting script, with a lot of room left for the actors to improvise (which in this case really means falling over).
As I tweeted a few people suggested that I check out Red Letter Media's
review of the film. This in itself was quite a commitment to watch as it's about an hour long. Having wasted two hours of my life already, was I really going to waste another? Of course I was.
I watched the first half yesterday and the second half today and whilst it was a relief to discover that there were at least two more intelligent men who felt the need to waste their life analysing a shit film, I was also impressed by the points that were being made. Because whilst it's very easy to sneer and feel superior to both Sandler and his audience, these guys had spotted something much more sinister and worrying. We are all aware of product placement and this film is especially can cynically guilty of it, but what is even more interesting is the question of how the film's budget of $79million was spent. Because as they rightly observe it's not up there on the screen. The suggestion is that Sandler is perpetrating what in other circumstances you might call a fraud or a con. Making a cheap movie, doling out the money to himself and his friends and making a series of adverts for products as he does so. Even if it's not an out and out con it's surely unethical and just a bit horrible that Sandler has so little regard for the people who will pay their hard-earned money to see him. Anyway, it's a real eye-opener of an analysis and worth having a look at if you've got time. Some of Sandler's work suggests he has a real talent if he could be bothered to employ it, but if he can make $20 million just for appearing in this film then you might question why he should bother. Probably just to feel a bit better about himself. Can he really have been in Funny People and not felt a bit uncomfortable about himself and his life? Does he really not care? I'd think he was attempting to commit professional suicide, except that he will undoubtedly be back with more.
The real question though is why Al Pacino agreed to do this film. It's not just a cameo either, like the uncredited one that Johnny Depp also inexplicably does, he's the main plot of the thing. I doubt that Al Pacino would really do a Dunkin Doughnuts advert, but he ends up doing one in the film. It's deliberately awful and embarrassing and Pacino (playing himself) SPOILER ALERT asks for it to be destroyed. Which doesn't make sense as he was in it and must have known how awful it was when he was filming it so why would he suddenly have that change of heart. So they're mocking embarrassing adverts, which might be fine if they had chosen a fictional product, but it's an embarrassing advert for a real thing that will work as an ironic advert for that real thing in real life. Is that the reason for this whole film and Pacino's involvement? Has he found a way to accept the advertising money without sullying his reputation by appearing in an advert? And if he's worried about sullying his reputation what is he doing in this film? Is he really that jealous of De Niro's work in the Meet the Fokkers franchise? Or does Sandler just have some shit on him?
It's fascinating but also quite sinister stuff and the guys on this podcast are right to question the integrity and get close to challenging the legality of it all.
We went to see "The Watch" tonight, which is remarkable for starring Richard Ayoade (just a decade or so ago I was watching him at the Edinburgh Fringe and look where he is now and look where I am now- oh dear), but which is alas not very good. But it was even harder to enjoy it in the light of the Jack and Jill analysis - the product placement and unsubtle adverts for 3D TV now glaringly obvious. At least some effort has been made with the script and the effects - though there's too much of this current trend of allowing the actors to "improvise" an idea by basically just repeating things quickly over each other. And whilst Sandler is justly accused of putting his mates in his films, essentially handing them a big pile of money for half a day's work, I did get the feeling that this is equally true of this slightly cooler group of comedy actors. Vince Vaun must have accrued quite a dossier of filth on everyone else to keep getting the work he gets.
Hollywood has always been about making money and so maybe I shouldn't be surprised that it is being so blatant about it. But it'd be nice if there was a bit more effort made with the main product that they're selling us, rather than the ones that they have inefficiently hidden in plain sight throughout.
This had all reignited my interest in doing a non-director's commentary podcast of various films that I love and hate though. So there's even more of my valuable time to be frittered away on rubbish. How I dare criticise another human being for anything I have no idea!
