EPIC (gender) FAIL

With a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 4% (“Jack and Jill is impossible to recommend on any level whatsoever”) and a Rolling Stones review of zero stars (“A total bust, a stupefyingly unfunny and shamelessly lazy farce”) it’s a wonder anyone would ever pay to see this movie.

I for one, will not.

Now, I understand that some people might say, “don’t knock it till you try it”. Well people, I tried the trailer.  And if I went to see the movie after that experience, it would kind of be like tasting some poisonous red berries and vomiting, and then following that up by make a poisonous berry jam cake and eating that too. It just wouldn’t be a good idea.

Mainly, what’s not okay about this film is that Sandler has made the FUNDAMENTAL ERROR of making “easy comedy” out of gender (that is, him acting like a “woman”). It’s not cool Sandler. See Juliet Jacques’ fantastic article for New Statesman on why this kind of comedy is not only degrading, but just generally not funny. On the one hand I appreciate the South Park philosophy of humour that it’s okay to make fun of anything– so long as you don’t leave anyone out. On the other, I don’t see that there are enough positive representations of gender-bending in popular culture to really balance the kind of poor humour presented by Sandler’s new flick.

Entertainment Weekly might laud Sandler for his ability to make people pay to watch him despite being incredibly crap, but I say bring on the boycott.