Jack and Jill [Blu-Ray]

Dennis Dugan

BY Robert BellPublished Mar 9, 2012

Should torrential downpours or an ice age put an end to the human race, my hope is that an intellectually superior species will rise and sift through the remnants of our culture, finding not the Parthenon or the Pyramids or the Sistine chapel, but rather a Blu-Ray player and a copy of Jack and Jill. I think they would delight in the effervescent cover art, featuring an enthused Adam Sandler in drag juxtaposed with the regular, seemingly constipated Sandler, noting the reverse sleeve image of drag Sandler sitting awkwardly on a donkey whose legs are sprawled out beneath it from her girth. What's more is that while the plot, wherein an advertising executive's embarrassing and revolting twin sister comes to visit only to titillate Al Pacino and fall in love with a Mexican, would likely be as incoherent and baffling to them as to us, surely the image of Sandler doing double-dutch with big plastic breasts strapped to him would provide as much insight into modern society as an entire season of Jersey Shore. Furthermore, the sequence wherein female Sandler goes on a family picnic with her brother's Mexican gardener, only to repeatedly assault a senior citizen, play soccer, eat Mexican food and then get "stinky, brownie squirts" or "Chimichanga bombs" rather, during a romantic moment, would enlighten them on our mating rituals and social customs. But I can only speculate on how they might respond to the image of Shaquille O'Neal inexplicable licking a giant ham provocatively. My guess is that it would be similar to how they might view the character of Adam Sandler's adopted Indian son, who likes to duct tape small animals to his body. Perhaps they would see the genius of a film that, at best, entertains through perplexing non-sequiturs and an entirely desultory structure fragmented by the weird silence that occurs whenever Sandler tries to act against himself. Maybe they would get the inside joke that director Dennis Dugan is clearly in on while filming a "behind the scene" moment with Pacino and Sandler, where Pacino says, "This entire thing is a ridiculous mess." The in-joke certainly isn't revealed on supplements that discuss the many cameos (Johnny Depp, Subway Jared, Bruce Jenner and Norm Macdonald as a Craigslist pervert, to name a few) and the process of dressing up like a woman. But, as mentioned, we can be assured that the future superior race will absorb these supplemental insights and explanations with the same verve and bewildered confusion as they would the feature length film. It's just a shame we can't be there to watch their heads cock to the side as they watch a talking parrot jump in a chocolate fountain and dance.
(Sony)

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