I blame you for this Tyler Perry. Now I’m sure Tyler Perry is reading this… because we all know Mr. Perry no doubt starts his day wanting to know what I have to say about stuff… and after reading this Mr. Perry will probably protest mightily. He’s probably saying ‘Hey, why do you want to blame me for this crap movie? Sure, I’ve dressed up like a woman in a movie or two, to great success I might add, but why blame me? Why not blame Tootsie or Mrs. Doubtfire. Hell… blame Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari… but leave me out of this!’ I’m sorry Mr. Perry but Tootsie, Doubtfire and Bosom Buddies are too far removed from the collective consciousness. You, right now, are the first and last name when it comes to cinematic cross dressing, and I gotta believe if you weren’t so damned successful at it Sony pictures wouldn’t have okayed Adam Sandlers latest film ‘Jack and Jill’, which some have called Mr. Sandler’s worst movie ever. I’m an Adam Sandler guy so I’m not going go out on him like that, especially since ‘Little Nicky’ still exists, but I’m afraid my man has left me little to defend him with, other than to shift the blame to Tyler Perry. Oh, and the worst Medea movie was better than this.

This time around Sandler is Jack Sadelstein, a big time Hollywood ad man with two cute kids and a wife in Erin played by Katie Holmes who joins a virtual murderers row of hot actresses trapped into playing a love interest in an Adam Sandler movie, a list which includes Salma Hayek, Leslie Mann, Jessica Biel, Tae Leoni, Kate Beckinsdale and so many others. Love him or hate him, the man does have high standards for his fake wives.

Jack’s obnoxious sister Jill (Sandler) is visiting this holiday season from the Bronx, and she does funny stuff like fart and sweat and speak out of turn and all kinds of funny stuff which makes her brother hate her and call her names. Jack wants Jill to go home, but circumstance always leads to Jill extending her vacation, Jill being all alone since their mother just passed away. Note that Jack doesn’t seem to care about this. At all. The two main things going on in the lives of Jack and Jill are Jack’s desperate need to get Al Pacino to appear as a pitchman for his Dunkin’ Donuts ad campaign and Jill’s desire to find a man. Is there any way these two disparate events could somehow meet, and generate hilarity and mad hinjinks? Why yes there is a way my friends.

While Jill may be a bit on the hideous side, somehow she’s captured Al Pacino’s heart. Jill’s not interested in the diminutive old man, despite the Bronx roots that they share, despite Al’s full court press of love that’s he’s putting on the ghoul, but he presses on.

So… Al wants Jill, Jack needs Al, Al knows Jack needs him so he leverages his desire for Jill upon Jack’s need for his services. In essence getting Jack to pimp out his sister. Or in case Jill won’t play along, since Jack looks remarkably similar to Jill, so imagine the hilarity and mad hijinks that would ensue if Jack should put on a dress, a wig and load up on cantaloupes and pretend to be Jill. It will be epically comedic. That is until Jill discovers her brother was just using her to get close to Al, and then it will be epically sad… until it gets funny again. At least in theory.

I am amazed at how remarkably unfunny this movie was. I know that not many twenty million dollar actors get critically crucified as much as my man Adam Sandler, and while some of this crucifixion is justified, not all the time. Just a few months ago I thought his comedy ‘Just Go with It’, while epically stupid, was consistently funny. I can’t roll with the critics and their attacks on that movie. Damn if I gotta join the pack on this one. Maybe even jump out in front and lead it. Pretty much every scene involving either Jack or Jill being the centerpiece was uniformly unfunny. Problem being that either Jack or Jill were the centerpiece in almost every scene in the entire movie. I don’t even know how that could happen. Now I’m not going to sit here and tell you that this movie was devoid of laughs, but just that they were few and far between and usually didn’t involve Jack or Jill, or at least pushed them off to the side. For instance, Norm McDonald makes a cameo as one of Jill’s blind dates. That was damned funny. But Norm McDonald made that scene funny. Johnny Depp also makes a brief cameo in this movie that was funny. Comparatively speaking at least. In the grand scheme of things it probably wasn’t all that funny, and if I was to describe that scene to somebody it’s doubtful that they would laugh, but when taken against what we were working with, it was funny. And Al Pacino’s Dunkin’ Donuts commercial was pretty funny too. I don’t know how much Dunkin’ Donuts had to pay to be the dramatic crux of this movie, but at least they got one of the few funny bits out of their generous donation.

Hey… I haven’t missed and Adam Sandler movie since… hell, I’ve never missed a movie Adam has starred in. I own ‘Bulletproof’ on defunct HD-DVD for goodness sakes. But if Adam keeps this up, I’m going to have to start skipping the next few. Nothing personal, I mean I’ve done my small part to insure he and his entire bloodline retires comfortably, now it’s his turn to return the favor by making me laugh more.