In an age where comedy has become an increasingly nuanced mockery of real life, Adam Sandler and the folks at Happy Madison remain committed to good old-fashioned slapstick humor. While the Louis CKs and Tina Feys of the world craft smart and tasteful shows about the pitfalls of middle age, Sandler serves up a double dose of poop- and Jew jokes in a $79 million blockbuster about coming to terms with an annoying twin. And that is part of the appeal of Jack and Jill: it seeks to please us without any measure of subtlety or wit.
The premise here is indeed quite simple. Sandler stars in the only two roles he knows how to play: the straight man with the sardonic tongue (Jack) and the loud but lovable imbecile with the funny voice (Jill). Whether crippling a pony under her weight or nose-diving a Jet Ski into the backyard, Jill makes us laugh because she’s stupid and clumsy. Jack is the requisite foil, charged with tapping into Jill’s bundle of comic relief. The formula is both dumb enough to please children and entertaining enough to force a few laughs out of adults.
Yet, stupid and clumsy does not a comedy make, and where Jack and Jill really succeeds is in its self-awareness. Al Pacino, playing himself, is the movie’s triumphant nod to itself. For those who would question why the silver screen legend of The Godfather and Scarface would subject himself to Sandler’s shenanigans, the movie has a ready answer: Pacino is going insane. Tortured by years of cell phone-distracted audiences and celebrity-worshipping fans, his frustration with life leads him to fall head over heels for the Bronx-born Jill.
Their relationship is in some ways an analog for the viewer’s own with Sandler here: only an insane person blinded by desperation or the past could love a woman hundreds of pounds his senior, and only a depraved and nostalgia-obsessed moviegoer would pay $10 for Jack and Jill. And once we, like Pacino, abandon our standards and ideals—informed by the context of today’s comedy genre—then maybe we too can find enjoyment in something simple and seemingly straightforward: for Pacino, that thing is Jill. For the viewer, it’s the movie.
In the end, Pacino is the device by which Jack and Jill questions our entire conception of modern comedy. Are we insane to find a movie like this funny? Or has the comedy landscape become so pretentious that we need a return to the insane to enjoy some classic family fun?
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