Cast: Adam Sandler, Katie Holmes, Al Pacino, Dana Carvy, Dean Patrick, and Rich Kline
Director: Dennis Dugan
Cinema: Jointly Eastgate and Rainbow
Running time: 87 minutes
Type of film: Farce/comedy
Age restriction: PGA
Reviewed by Prof Joel White

There comes a time in the life of every film reviewer when his assessment of the merits of a film will differ sometimes sharply with that of the audience he is sitting among.

This cannot happen frequently in Harare at least it hasn’t happened recently if for no other reason than that Harare’s cinemas are experiencing a period of very scant attendance.
The exception being on the weekends; and it was on a weekend with a very responsive audience that “Jack and Jill” was seen.
Adam Sandler, New York City born and now 45 years of age, has frequently been described as an “acquired taste.” By which is usually meant that it can take some time to accept or appreciate his admitted peculiarities. It is well known that in America many moviegoers consider his films to be off limits.

This consideration is highly relevant in a review of this film because, in it, Sandler plays two parts: that of Jack Sadelstein and his unmarried twin sister Jill.
Given the road that Adam Sandler (as well as his father before him) has travelled for these many years, it is highly unlikely that he can ever be found in a film, which is not overwhelmingly farcical. And here is where we find the storyline of Jack and Jill.

As Jack, married with two children, he is the head of a Los Angeles advertising firm. As his twin sister, Jill, still living in New York and unmarried, she is loud, pushy and decidedly unlovable.

Enter Al Pacino, playing himself the overwhelmingly successful movie actor and man about town. Since, as movie goers, we are the willing victims (and, often, sufferers) of whatever the film’s writers and producers throw at us, we have no say in some of the illogicalities which film writers subject us to.
And so it is with Jack and Jill. Al Pacino, stepping down from his throne as Hollywood’s king, falls in love with Jack’s fat, ugly, loud, old sister Jill.

And today’s considerable audience at Eastgate laughed their way through the least subtle farce of the year.