I guess if you judge it on the Adam Sandler scale it isn’t that bad.
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“Blended” is the latest comedy from Adam Sandler and the gang at “Happy Madison” films. This time Sandler is rejoined by Drew Barrymore in a story about what it means when two people who hate each other and are awful parents end up being forced to spend time together as their families wind up on the same vacation. So has Adam Sandler found a way to make a movie worth watching after so many recent bombs? Well, let me just say this, about three quarters in to screening this movie a storm came through and the power went out. And I swear the sound I heard from the audience was a sigh of relief. I walked out to see if it had affected the other screens. Nope. Godzilla was still roaring and Seth Rogen was still belly laughing across the way, so I have no other choice but to believe God was putting an end to these poor people’s suffering. Not mine, of course, because I had to stick around to see the end to review it. But still it was one of the surest signs of God’s mercy I’ve seen in a while.
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Ok, Ok, it’s easy to crack jokes about Sandler movies, and while that story is completely true, there is something to be said for consistency even if it is something that I think is consistently bad. I mean Sandler fans must love this stuff right? For me? Well, I did really enjoy the African setting. At this point shouldn’t they just start naming Sandler movies by location, like Ernest and Medea movies? “Adam Sandler goes to Africa” or “Adam Sandler take a cruise” Just feels right to me. Also, I guess I enjoyed seeing Barrymore with Sandler again, I really did like them in “50 First Dates” and Barrymore seems to be trying to find the heart here, and at times she starts to uncover it. But like some sort of frustrated emotional archeologist, any time she finds it, Sandler is immediately there to bury it with his relentlessly juvenile sense of humor. Cause really, no heartfelt scene should end without being undercut by at least one bodily function or sex joke.
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But it’s not just Sandler’s patented combination of slapstick and Jr. High sensibility that keeps this movie from being engaging, it’s everything else too. The acting is dreadful, the story is completely predictable, and the message seems to be something about not being able to parent kids of the opposite gender. It’s like Sandler has decided he’s putting all the chips on people showing up for the old school shenanigans and phoning the rest of it in. The problem is he continues to make MySpace movies in a Facebook world completely blind to the fact that movies have continued to grown up even if he hasn’t. But the worst thing is, it’s just not funny. Joke after joke falls completely flat as you either see them coming a mile away or they are just downright mean.
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At the end of the day, “Blended” is a bit better than most recent Sandler movies, but honestly thats not saying much. Even as hard as Drew Barrymore works, she can only stretch it to a D+
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