Jack and Jill (2011 film)

Jack and Jill is a 2011 American comedy film directed by Dennis Dugan from a script by Steve Koren and Adam Sandler. Released on November 11, 2011 by Columbia Pictures, the film stars Sandler in a dual role as the titular twin siblings, as well as Katie Holmes and Al Pacino. It tells the story of an advertisement executive who dreads the visit of his unemployed twin sister during Thanksgiving and overstays into Hanukkah at the time when he is instructed to get Al Pacino to appear in a Dunkin' Donuts commercial.

Jack and Jill was panned by critics and audiences, although Pacino's performance received some praise. Some have since considered the film to be one of the worst ever made. At the 32nd Golden Raspberry Awards, the film was nominated for a record of 12 Razzies in all ten categories. It became the first film to sweep the Razzies, winning in each category including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor, Worst Actress, and Worst Screenplay. The film's ten wins was also a record for most Razzies won by any film. The film made $149 million against a $79 million budget.

Plot
Growing up in the Bronx, New York City, Jill Sadelstein constantly but unsuccessfully tries to capture the attention of her gifted fraternal twin brother Jack by injuring him or repelling others from him. As an adult, Jack is a successful advertising executive who resides in Los Angeles with his wife Erin, their biological daughter Sofia, and their adoptive Hindu son Gary, who compulsively tapes various objects to his own body as a habit. Unlike her husband, Erin views Gary's behavior as his trademark. In contrast, Jill is unemployed and lives alone in their childhood home, located in a working-class neighborhood of the Bronx, having inherited the house following their mother's death the previous year.

Jill visits Jack for Thanksgiving. She horrifies him by announcing she plans to depart at the end of Hanukkah; she has an open-ended plane ticket. At dinner, she annoys him and embarrasses a homeless guest, Otto, as well as Erin's parents, Carter and Bitsy Simmons. Jack snaps at Jill, and she runs into the woods with her pet cockatoo Poopsie. Erin demands that Jack apologize for upsetting Jill, which he does reluctantly.

Jill proceeds through a list of activities she has planned to do during her visit. These include being a contestant on the TV game show The Price is Right (she receives a variety of prizes after incapacitating herself while spinning the wheel), going horseback riding (she proves too heavy for a pony which collapses under her weight), and touring a studio. When she answers her phone in the middle of a movie, Jack reprimands her, and she exits in tears.

Deciding that Jill needs a romantic partner, Jack, aided by his children, encourages her to try online dating. She is initially unsuccessful until Jack alters her profile and posts it on Craigslist, leading to over 100 responses. A person nicknamed "Funbucket" meets her at a swanky restaurant but only a few minutes into their evening, hides in the men's restroom until she leaves. The staff of Jack's company Sunny & Sadelstein throw Jack a birthday party. Jill attends, but she disgraces herself along with Jack and his colleagues, causing her to be ejected.

Meanwhile, Jack tries to cast actor Al Pacino in a Dunkin' Donuts commercial that will feature their newest coffee beverage, the Dunkaccino. At a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game, Pacino ignores Jack but is infatuated with Jill. He gives her his phone number and invites her to his home, where she accidentally destroys his Oscar statuette. She is uninterested in him and promptly departs. Jack's Mexican gardener Felipe, also smitten with her, introduces her to his family at their annual fiesta. She immediately connects with everyone. After trying Mexican food for the first time, she suffers a severe case of diarrhea.

Pacino refuses to work on the Dunkaccino advertisement unless he has another date with Jill, so Jack invites her to accompany him and his immediate family on a cruise. She insists on bringing Poopsie, despite the cruise line's strict policy against pets. At sea, Jill and her bird irritate everybody onboard except for her brother's family. When Jill repeatedly rebuffs Pacino, Jack volunteers on her behalf, disguised as her. Suspecting that her invitation was just so Pacino would do the advertisement, she phones Jack, who answers as her, and hears Pacino in the background. Dejected, she returns home, humiliating Jack. Arriving in the Bronx on New Year's Eve, Jill discovers that the bank has foreclosed on her home because Jill has continuously discarded numerous bills which she mistook for junk mail.

Jill, now homeless, is carrying a picture of the siblings' deceased mother when she encounters a group of former schoolmates, led by class bully Monica, at a restaurant. Jack arrives with his family, and the siblings reconcile via their made-up language. Monica attacks Erin, but Jill hits Monica. Pacino arrives dressed as Don Quixote, his character in a Broadway production of Man of La Mancha, and reminds Jill that he cares about her, but other men deserve her more than he does. She returns to Felipe, who confesses he loves her, and they start a relationship. Pacino ultimately disapproves of Jack's agency's commercial, which features the actor rapping, and he instructs Jack to destroy all iterations of it.

Cast
The film features cameos from Johnny Depp, Regis Philbin (in his final film appearance), Dan Patrick, Shaquille O'Neal, Drew Carey, John McEnroe, Christie Brinkley, Bill Romanowski, Michael Irvin, Jared Fogle, Billy Blanks, Vince Offer, and Caitlyn Jenner (the latter prior to her transition, as Bruce Jenner) as themselves.

Box office
The film opened in 3,438 theaters at #2 with $25,003,575, behind Immortals, which debuted in the top spot with $32,206,425. The film closed on February 26, 2012, with a total gross of $74,158,157 in North America. It also made $75,515,631 in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $149,673,788 against its $79 million budget.

Critical response
Unusually Jack and Jill was screened for critics in Ireland but not in the United Kingdom. It was panned by reviewers. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 3% based on 118 reviews, with an average rating of 2.90/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Although it features an inexplicably committed performance from Al Pacino, Jack and Jill is impossible to recommend on any level whatsoever." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 23 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

On the day of the premiere, comedians such as Jake Fogelnest launched a parody promotional account on Twitter, @JackNJillMovie, bashing the film; garnering hundreds of followers and its posts retweeted by figures such as Aziz Ansari, Paul Scheer, and Alan Sepinwall, it was taken down by Twitter that evening due to a complaint from a Sony executive. Critics from The Daily Beast, The Austin Chronicle, and Time declare Jack and Jill to be the worst Sandler film. Reviews noted issues in other Sandler films were present and even worsened in Jack and Jill. Common criticisms were targeted towards the crude humor, product placement, celebrity cameos, Multiple sources: and a sentimental ending that contradicted the film's mostly mean-spirited tone. The A.V. Club's Scott Tobias went after Sandler's lack of passion, describing most scenes as the actor "waiting around for somebody to feed him a line". Time contributor Mary Pols described a joke about Jack's obsessed fear of anti-semitism as a punch line with no joke. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone also argued, "Al Pacino said something great. After he looks at himself in the commercial, he says, 'Burn this! Nobody must ever see this!' That's my review of Jack and Jill." Andrew Barker of Variety said that the film's "general stupidity, careless direction and reliance on a single-joke premise that was never really funny to begin with are only the most obvious of its problems." Pacino's performance was positively received, and some critics noted it to be one of the film's best parts, although his presence was questioned. The London Evening Standard found the actor (playing himself) to be "slumming" it in providing Jill one of the film's few funny parts.

Despite generally scathing reviews, the film did receive some positive reception. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle stated that while he found the character Jill annoying, "almost everything else in this comedy succeeds. The central situation...has comic energy... (the film has) successful bits and big moments of satisfying comedy." Tom Russo of The Boston Globe gave the film two and a half out of a possible four stars, writing "What's more genuinely wacky is what a kick this movie can sometimes be, completely in spite of its big, flat stunt." Armond White of CityArts praised the film's "comic introspection," writing that "Sandler's comedies are not 'dumb fun,' maybe that's why they're not in critics' favor."

Jack and Jill was in the top five of numerous critics' lists of the worst films of 2011, ranking number one on those of Peoples Alynda Wheat, the Miami Heralds Rene Rodriguez, Times Mary Pols, The A.V. Club staff, and the Sioux City Journals Bruce Miller. For Rolling Stone, Peter Travers ranked it the year's second worst film and tied Sandler's performance with Anne Hathaway in One Day for his recognition of worst actor of the year. Since then it has been called one of the worst films of all-time by the Evening Standard and Rotten Tomatoes, as well as one of the worst Sandler films by Variety.

In popular culture
Five months before release and the film getting extremely poor reception, the film was mocked on South Park during the episode "You're Getting Old" when Stan and his friends go to the movie theater to watch X-Men: First Class, a trailer depicts Adam Sandler's characters Jack and Jill as feces (the following episode, "Ass Burgers", first aired on October 5, then shows their character Stan Marsh, a ten-year-old, needing to intoxicate himself with alcohol to laugh at the film), and in Robot Chicken during Season 6 during the segment "Twist Endings" depicting Jill being actually Jack and that the real Jill died when she was young; Jack is driven so insane by the revelation he immediately smashes his mirror and then committed suicide by slitting his throat with one of the broken mirror pieces. A screening of the film was a reward given to the Upolu tribe in Survivor: South Pacific.

Accolades


At the 32nd Golden Raspberry Awards, Jack and Jill won all 10 categories, a first in the 32-year history of the annual parody event: Worst Picture (for Sandler, Jack Giarraputo, and Todd Garner), Worst Actor and Worst Actress (for Sandler), Worst Supporting Actor (for Swardson and Pacino, which the latter won), Worst Supporting Actress (for Holmes and Spade in drag, which the latter won), Worst Director (for Dugan), Worst Screenplay (for Sandler, Ben Zook, and Steve Koren), Worst Screen Couple (for Sandler and either Pacino, Holmes or Sandler), Worst Ensemble and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel. Sandler also set another Razzie record by garnering 12 nominations in total, breaking Eddie Murphy's 2008 five-nomination record for the most garnered by one individual in a single ceremony (for Norbit). In addition to Jack and Jill, he was also nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off, or Sequel, and Worst Screenplay nominations for Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star; and two Worst Screen Couple awards for Just Go with It. Razzie founder John J. B. Wilson called "almost karmic for someone to have made that much razz-able stuff in one year", suggesting the actor "angered someone really powerful, I would say".