Blended

I said to myself: “this week, you should really try and write something positive”.

And then I decided I don’t feel like writing something positive. I feel like destroying something. I feel like taking a sledgehammer wrapped in barbed wire and smashing the last vestiges of life out of something (entirely metaphorical, I assure you). Who could I possibly turn to for fulfilment of that purpose?

The Partially Educated Review

"Hello darkness, my old friend"

In 50 Words Or Less: would give away the last paragraph of the review. So read that.

In Detail: I will say this and you can choose whether or not you want to believe me. I don’t hate Adam Sandler quite as much as you would probably expect me to. Go back to some of his earlier work and there’s some enjoyable enough films kicking around in there (yes, Happy Gilmore). Then he started providing Rob Schneider with his own starring roles. As well all know, this yielded similar levels of success as would asking the Westboro Baptist Church to co-ordinate the global security for all Pride events. Though there were a couple of acceptable moments after that, the downhill slide was taking on a sharper gradient. Then Jack And Jill came down from the hill with no broken crowns and decided to dash the audience’s brains out instead. He hasn’t recovered since.

With Blended, Sandler made two fairly fatal mistakes. First off, he decided that he wanted a holiday in Africa, but should be entitled to make money from said holiday. As if that’s not enough to resent him for, he also seemed to think that Round 3 of his partnership with Drew Barrymore was also something everyone wanted. 50 More First Dates, anybody?

One of the worst box office openings of Sandler’s career followed and his box office reliability began to look a lot like this.

Here's your plot. After a blind date that’s just as painful for the characters as it is for the audience having to sit through it, Sandler and Barrymore’s paths just can’t stop crossing; a bit like my eyes after the convoluted chain of events that leads to them accidentally holidaying together in Africa. Most of the film’s humour comes at the expense of both characters' young children. Barrymore has two sons: a serial masturbator (remember, this is a Sandler film) and a tantrum throwing adrenaline junkie. Sandler, meanwhile, has three daughters. One of them’s there to be cute, but they still allow her to make devil noises and (in the film’s longest running joke) the other two apparently look like men. Despite the fact that one of them looks like this.

As ever, Sandler has failed to grasp the rule of three when it comes to a joke. Instead, his every amusement is rammed harder into the ground than a rat under a skyscraper. Further to the problem, rule of three’s only applicable if the joke is actually funny the first time. My face after every "is she a boy or a girl?" joke:

By this point, Sandler has been peddling his brand of humour for 25 years and it's not hard to argue that a lot of those who liked him at first have become fed up. Those who never liked him to begin with have taken such a joyous pleasure in his dwindling financial successes that I’m starting to wonder if they laugh when a puppy gets shot in the face. As for that handful of people who are still tolerating Sandler…

I went in to this film with a ONE out of 10 for it to improve upon and developed a system that would enable it to do that in a fair manner. For every time a joke in this film made me laugh I would give it one more point. That’s right, if it made me laugh 9 times I would be obligated to give this film a TEN out of 10, in spite of whether or not I hated everything else about it.

TWO out of 10