BEFORE: I already cut one film from this week's chain for being too romance-based, you would think that logically I should cut this one too, but since it doesn't link to anything else in the romance section of my watchlist, there's really no point in saving this one for February - it's better, I think, to treat this as a film about parenthood, and use that to tee up the Father's Day film for tomorrow. Makes sense?
Terry Crews carries over from "Street Kings".
THE PLOT: After a bad blind date, a man and woman find themselves stuck together at a resort for families, where their attraction grows as their respective kids benefit from the burgeoning relationship.
AFTER: There was a time when you could chart the Sandler family vacation schedule, since Sandler is an actor and producer who also frequently casts his wife and kids in his movies, it made sense to shoot in some exotic location, and get in a vacation on the studio's dime. I won't go so far as to call it a scam, it's probably perfectly legit and it's more of a perk, but over time it starts to look a little scammish. "50 First Dates" filmed in Hawaii, so did "Just Go With It" and then you had blended, which filmed in Sun City, South Africa. So, sure, family safari - am I missing any of the family vacation locations? If so, please let me know.
You know who ELSE went to Hawaii? The Bradys, that's who - as in "The Brady Bunch". Realizing this means that this whole film is just an updated gender-swapped "Brady Bunch" where they moved the vacation to the first episode of the series. And they took away one kid so you wouldn't notice the comparison - the widowed father is raising three girls and the divorced mother is raising two boys. OF COURSE they're going to get together, we all know this - the "Brady Bunch" TV show just started off with the wedding so we all wouldn't have to see the awkward getting-to-know-each-other phase. But that's where most of the comedy is going to be found, right? Well, it was the 1960's and divorce was still a touchy subject, so the sooner they married the Bradys the better America was going to take this blended family with conveniently equal numbers of girls and boys and only one co-ed bathroom. (Seriously?). And don't even get me started on the impossible architecture of a house that an architect lives in...we need a re-boot of "The Brady Bunch" where they live in an MC Escher-like house where every closet door connects to the metaverse of alternate Bradys in other dimensions. "Every Brady Everywhere All at Once". Somebody write me a pilot.
Back in SandlerLand, in this dimension he's Jim, a widowed father who goes on a bad blind date with this divorced mother, and for some unknown reason he takes her to Hooters, drinks her beer without telling her and then gets an "emergency" call so he can do a dine-and-ditch. How rude! But then he meets-cute with Lauren later on when he's trying to buy feminine hygiene products for his daughter and she's trying to buy a skin mag for her son. Long story in both cases - but did it need to be? They help each other out, mix up their credit cards at the pharmacy, and this places them back together again when they learn that Lauren's best friend's boyfriend, who is also Jim's boss, just broke up with her right before their planned vacation to Africa, which would have involved the two of them and his FIVE kids. Jeez, that's seven people, and wouldn't you know it, both Lauren and Jim get the same idea, to call the guy and try to buy that vacation second-hand for their own kids, and wouldn't you know it, that adds up to exactly seven people. It's like somebody wrote it that way or something...
What's odd is that the two families don't see each other on the plane, wouldn't they all be using the tickets that were already purchased? No? Wait, you can't transfer plane tickets to somebody else, so maybe this isn't really a mistake - but then again, yes it is, because then how do these two single-parent families afford the plane fare to Africa? Any way you slice it, this is some kind of NITPICK POINT. If you've ever booked a vacation and then had to cancel it, you know what a bitch it is to get your money back from the airlines - they just plain WON'T do it, as I found out when we had tickets to Florida, just after the pandemic hit. They'll offer you CREDIT which you can use on another flight down the road, or maybe MILES toward future purchases but under no circumstances will they give you your money back, how the hell would they stay in business if they did that? So that means that Dick, Jim's employer and Jen's boyfriend, had to eat those tickets or just get credit for them toward future flights. And Lauren and Jim somehow, miraculously had to get last-minute tickets on the cheap for themselves and their collective five kids. Yeah, keep dreaming, this only happens in the movies.
Anyway, impossible as it sounds, the two families have to share a hotel suite in an African resort, and pretend to be an about-to-be-married couple with five kids instead of two separate families, because there's probably some law in South Africa that we don't know about. And the resort in South Africa just HAPPENS to be hosting an entire complement of blended families or ones that are about to be blended, which I don't think is a real thing that resorts do, though of course I could be wrong. Either way, you don't suppose that sharing a giant hotel suite and taking advantage of all the fun activities that the resort offers will bring Lauren and Jim's families closer together, leading to greater understanding and maybe the possibility of a new romance between them? Nah, how would that even happen? Well, guess what, you're not going to believe this...
Sharing the hotel suite and taking advantage of all the fun activities that the resort offers manages to bring Lauren and Jim's families closer together and leads to a greater understanding between them and the possibility of a new romance - man, I did NOT see that coming. Oh, wait, I totally did and you probably did too.
The problem comes when the comedy bits just aren't set up very well - Jim's two older daughters keep getting confused for boys, but why, just because of their haircuts? That's some weak sauce, because they look more like girls than boys, so for the joke to work they really needed to emphasize this more, maybe cast actors that looked more gender-neutral or something, but I never really felt they looked like boys, so I didn't understand why people were so confused, and then the joke never really worked. Maybe the film was a few years ahead of its time, because if they made this film after 2020, there would be no shortage of trans actors and they could have stepped this up a notch. Then having one daughter believe in an "invisible Mom" and another one speaking in an "Exorcist"-like voice from time to time, well I don't know if these bits qualify as funny or scary or just sad. Is this meant to symbolize bad parenting or the weirdness of kids who are dealing with their mother's death? It's so damn unclear because these are just comedy set-ups that go nowhere.
At least there's a "solution" for the oldest daughter being mistaken for a boy, Lauren takes her to the salon where she gets glammed up, though her father is then horrified - why, because his dead wife was kind of butch? This is a poorly-written excuse for bad behavior on the father's part. But a couple of things here, a father shouldn't call his daughter named "Hillary" by "Larry", even if he secretly wanted a son, this is not a cool nickname for your daughter, it only exposes his shortcomings and insensitivity. Even if he wanted her to be on the school basketball team, it's also not cool to tell her she needs to "bulk up" and not act feminine in any way - sometimes you just have to let your kids be and figure this stuff out for themselves, and if it's bad to instill the old gender stereotypes on them (boys do this, girls do that) then its also just as bad to force the new ones on them (girls must play sports, girls shouldn't be so femme). Just saying.
Well, at least the father here is present, and taking an active role in their upbringing. That's more than I can say for some fathers seen in movies, and God knows I've seen just as many lax and absent fathers in the past month than I have active ones who care. Jim doesn't get everything right here, but at least he's trying - and then maybe he did want to have sons, but if the two families then blend together, he can have a whole new set of fun teaching sports to Lauren's sons. This part rang true and was something of a redemption for his character.
OK so that's half of the Adam Sandler-based Father's Day weekend down, with one more film to come tomorrow. Today's film goes out to the stepfathers and the widowed fathers and the single-parent fathers, it's their day tomorrow too. What the hell, even the absent fathers, spare a thought for them tomorrow if not a greeting card or a phone call. So they didn't show up for your baseball games, but you've got to forgive them one day, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually.
Also starring Adam Sandler (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Drew Barrymore (last seen in "Scream"), Kevin Nealon (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Wendi McLendon-Covey (last seen in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), Bella Thorne (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip"), Joel McHale (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Abdoulaye N'Gom (last seen in "Green Card"), Jessica Lowe (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Judith Sandler (ditto), Braxton Beckham, Emma Fuhrmann (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Alyvia Alyn Lind (last seen in "Overboard" (2018)), Kyle Red Silverstein, Zak Henri, Shaquille O'Neal (last seen in "When In Rome"), Dan Patrick (last seen in "Hustle"), Sunny Sandler (ditto), Jackie Sandler (last seen in "The Last Summer"), Sadie Sandler (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Tim Herlihy (ditto), Jared Sandler (ditto), Alexis Arquette (last seen in "She's All That"), Katheryn Cain, Susan Yeagley (last seen in "Mascots"), Aimee Ntull, Mary Pat Gleason (last seen in "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser"), Dale Steyn, Allen Covert (last seen in "Bulletproof"), Chris April, Lauren Lapkus (last heard in "The Last Blockbuster"), Anna Colwell (last seen in "Term Life"), Marissa Raisor, Ashley Pike, Casey Luckey, Rob Moran (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Michael Buscemi (last seen in "Being Flynn"), Jackie Goldston, Robert Harvey (last seen in "First Kill"), Bill Romanowski (last seen in "The Longest Yard"),
RATING: 4 out of 10 members of Ladysmith Black Mambazo
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