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Jack and Jill (2011 film)

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Jack and Jill
A man not happy man and happy looking woman. The tagline reads "His twin sister is coming for the holidays ... and it ain't pretty".
Theatrical release poster
Directed byDennis Dugan
Screenplay by
Story byBen Zook
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyDean Cundey
Edited byTom Costain
Music by
Production
companies
Distributed bySony Pictures Releasing
Release date
  • November 11, 2011 (2011-11-11)
Running time
91 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$79 million[1]
Box office$149 million[1]

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.[2] 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

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Growing up in the Bronx, Jill Sadelstein makes repeated unsuccessful attempts to capture the attention of her gifted 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 body. Conversely, Jill is unemployed and lives alone in their childhood home, which she inherited following their mother's death the previous year.

Jill visits Jack for Thanksgiving and announces she plans to depart at the end of Hanukkah, having an open-ended plane ticket, much to his consternation. At dinner, her obnoxious behavior embarrasses a homeless guest, Otto, as well as Erin's parents, Carter and Bitsy Simmons. Jack snaps at Jill, and she flees into the woods with her pet cockatoo Poopsie. Erin demands that Jack apologize to her, which he does reluctantly.

Jill proceeds through a list of activities she has planned to do during her visit, including being a contestant on 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, garnering over 100 responses. A person nicknamed "Funbucket" meets her at a high-end restaurant, but only a few minutes into their evening, retreats into the men's restroom and hides there until she leaves. The staff of Jack's company, Sunny & Sadelstein, throw him a birthday party. Jill attends, but disgraces herself along with Jack and his colleagues, resulting in her ejection.

Meanwhile, Jack tries to cast Al Pacino in a Dunkin' Donuts commercial for their newest menu item, the Dunkaccino. At a Lakers game, Pacino ignores Jack, but finds himself infatuated with Jill. He gives her his phone number and invites her to his home, where she accidentally destroys his Oscar statuette. Uninterested in him, she 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; however, after trying Mexican food for the first time, she suffers a severe case of diarrhea.

Pacino agrees to work on the Dunkaccino advertisement on the condition that he has another date with Jill, so Jack invites her to accompany him and his family on a cruise. She insists on bringing Poopsie, despite the cruise line's strict policy against pets. At sea, Jill and Poopsie irritate everybody onboard. When Jill repeatedly rebuffs Pacino, Jack disguises himself as her and flirts with him on her behalf. Suspecting that her invitation was just to convince Pacino to do the advertisement, she phones Jack and hears Pacino in the background. Dejected, she returns home. Arriving in the Bronx on New Year's Eve, Jill discovers that the bank has foreclosed on her home after she discarded numerous bills that she mistook for junk mail.

Jill, now homeless, 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 defends her. 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 him rapping, and instructs Jack to destroy all iterations of it.

Cast

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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, Günter Schlierkamp and Caitlyn Jenner (the latter prior to her transition, as Bruce Jenner) as themselves.

Production

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In 2024, Al Pacino elaborated on his decision to join the cast of the film stating: "It came at a time in my life that I needed it, because it was after I found out I had no more money. My accountant was in prison, and I needed something quickly. So I took [Jack and Jill]."[4][5]

Release

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Reception

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Box office

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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.[6] 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.[1]

Critical response

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Unusually Jack and Jill was screened for critics in Ireland but not in the United Kingdom.[7] It was panned by reviewers.[8] 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."[9] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 23 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[10] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[11]

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.[12] Critics from The Daily Beast, The Austin Chronicle, and Time declare Jack and Jill to be the worst Sandler film.[13] Reviews noted issues in other Sandler films were present and even worsened in Jack and Jill.[14] Common criticisms were targeted towards the crude humor,[15] product placement,[16] celebrity cameos,[17] and a sentimental ending that contradicted the film's mostly mean-spirited tone.[18] 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".[19] Time contributor Mary Pols described a joke about Jack's obsessed fear of anti-semitism as a punch line with no joke.[20] 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."[21] 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."[22] Pacino's performance was positively received, and some critics noted it to be one of the film's best parts,[23] although his presence was questioned.[24] The London Evening Standard found the actor (playing himself) to be "slumming" it in providing Jill one of the film's few funny parts.[25]

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."[26] 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."[27] 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."[28]

Jack and Jill was in the top five of numerous critics' lists of the worst films of 2011,[29][30][31] ranking number one on those of People's Alynda Wheat,[31] the Miami Herald's Rene Rodriguez,[31] Time's Mary Pols,[32] The A.V. Club staff,[33] and the Sioux City Journal's Bruce Miller.[34] 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.[35] Since then it has been called one of the worst films of all-time by the Evening Standard[36] and Rotten Tomatoes,[37] as well as one of the worst Sandler films by Variety.[38]

[edit]

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.[39] A screening of the film was a reward given to the Upolu tribe in Survivor: South Pacific.

Accolades

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Adam Sandler (pictured) broke the record for the most nominations in a single ceremony of the Razzies for Jack and Jill, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, and Just Go with It.

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.[40] Sandler also set another Razzie record by garnering 11 personal 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.[41] 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".[41]

Award Category Nominee(s) Result Ref.
Alliance of Women Film Journalists Hall of Shame Production and Cast Nominated [42]
ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards Top Box Office Films Rupert Gregson-Williams Won [43]
Golden Raspberry Awards Worst Picture Todd Garner, Jack Giarraputo and Adam Sandler Won [40]
Worst Director Dennis Dugan Won
Worst Actor Adam Sandler (also for Just Go with It) Won
Worst Actress Adam Sandler (in drag) Won
Worst Supporting Actor Al Pacino (as himself) Won
Nick Swardson (also for Just Go with It) Nominated
Worst Supporting Actress Katie Holmes Nominated
David Spade (in drag) Won
Worst Screenplay Screenplay by Adam Sandler and Steve Koren;
Story by Ben Zook 		Won
Worst Screen Couple Adam Sandler and either Katie Holmes, Al Pacino, or himself (in drag) Won
Worst Screen Ensemble The entire cast Won
Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel Rip-off/Remake of Glen or Glenda Won
Golden Schmoes Awards Worst Movie of the Year Won [44]
Houston Film Critics Society Awards Worst Picture Nominated [45]
Internet Film Critic Society Awards Worst Film Won [46]
Kids' Choice Awards Favorite Movie Actor Adam Sandler Won [47]
Women Film Critics Circle Awards Worst Female Images in a Movie Nominated [48]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "Jack and Jill (2011)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved March 5, 2012.
  2. ^ Setoodeh, Ramin (November 11, 2011). "Movie Review: Adam Sandler's 'Jack and Jill' Is the Worst Movie Ever Made". The Daily Beast.
  3. ^ "Al Pacino, Katie Holmes Join 'Jack and Jill'". News in Film. Archived from the original on December 29, 2010. Retrieved December 6, 2010.
  4. ^ Al Pacino Says He Starred in ‘Jack and Jill' Because “I Had No More Money"
  5. ^ Al Pacino Is Still Going Big
  6. ^ "'Immortals' #1 With So-So $32M Domestic But $36M Foreign, 'Jack And Jill' $26M". Deadline Hollywood. PMC. November 13, 2011. Retrieved November 15, 2011.
  7. ^ Clarke, Donald (February 6, 2012). "The strange story of the Jack and Jill press show". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on February 7, 2012. Retrieved May 11, 2021.
  8. ^ "The tragedy of Adam Sandler". Salon. November 14, 2011. Retrieved June 14, 2014.
  9. ^ "Jack and Jill (2011)". Rotten Tomatoes. November 11, 2011. Retrieved January 2, 2021.
  10. ^ "Jack and Jill Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved November 18, 2011.
  11. ^ "Cinemascore". Archived from the original on December 20, 2018. Retrieved June 21, 2019.
  12. ^ Evans, Bradford (November 14, 2011). "The Rise and Fall of the Fake @JackNJillMovie Twitter Account". Vulture. Archived from the original on January 23, 2021. Retrieved April 30, 2021.
  13. ^ Multiple sources:
  14. ^ Multiple sources:
  15. ^ Multiple sources:
  16. ^ Multiple sources:
  17. ^ Multiple sources:
  18. ^ Multiple sources:
  19. ^ Tobias, Scott (November 11, 2011). "Jack And Jill". The A.V. Club. Retrieved May 2, 2021.
  20. ^ Pols, Mary (November 10, 2011). "Jack and Jill: What An Awful Drag". Time. Archived from the original on November 13, 2011. Retrieved May 7, 2021.
  21. ^ Setoodeh, Ramin (November 11, 2011). "Movie Review: Adam Sandler's 'Jack and Jill' Is the Worst Movie Ever Made". The Daily Beast. Retrieved December 17, 2016.
  22. ^ Barker, Andrew (November 10, 2011). "Jack and Jill". Variety. Retrieved May 7, 2021.
  23. ^ Multiple sources:
  24. ^ Hall, Sandra (December 1, 2011). "Cameos can't dull the awful effect of Sandler in stereo". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on December 4, 2011. Retrieved May 2, 2021.
  25. ^ "Jack and Jill – review". London Evening Standard. February 3, 2013. Archived from the original on December 16, 2013. Retrieved June 8, 2021.
  26. ^ LaSalle, Mick (November 11, 2011). "'Jack and Jill' review: Jack's funny, Jill's a drag". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved January 1, 2012.
  27. ^ Russo, Tom (November 11, 2011). "Jack and Jill". The Boston Globe.
  28. ^ White, Armond (November 21, 2011). "Jack and Jill". New York Film Critics Circle.
  29. ^ Schwarzbaum, Lisa (December 16, 2011). "10 Best Movies (and 5 Worst) of 2011: Lisa Schwarzbaum's Picks". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  30. ^ "The Worst Films of 2011". PopMatters. January 9, 2012. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  31. ^ a b c Howe, Sean (January 23, 2012). "Vulture Critics' Poll: The Complete 'Worst Movie of 2011' Ballots". New York. Archived from the original on January 26, 2012. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  32. ^ Pols, Mary (December 7, 2011). "The Top 10 Everything of 2011 – Jack and Jill". Time. Archived from the original on December 7, 2011. Retrieved December 13, 2011.
  33. ^ "The worst films of 2011". The A.V. Club. December 15, 2011. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  34. ^ Miller, Bruce (December 30, 2011). "The Five Worst Films of 2011". Sioux City Journal. Archived from the original on April 29, 2021. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  35. ^ "Scumtacular: The Worst Movies of 2011 'Transformers,' 'Twilight' and more". Rolling Stone. December 29, 2011. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  36. ^ Fletcher, Harry (May 15, 2018). "The 12 worst films ever made". Evening Standard. Archived from the original on April 29, 2021. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  37. ^ McGree, Jason (January 6, 2020). "100 Worst Movies of All Time". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  38. ^ "Adam Sandler's 10 Worst Movies Ever". Variety. May 23, 2014. Retrieved September 3, 2021.
  39. ^ Parker, Trey; Stone, Matt (March 2012). South Park: The Complete Fifteenth Season. You're Getting Old (Blu-ray Disc: Audio commentary). Paramount Home Entertainment. Event occurs at 05:15.
  40. ^ a b "Adam Sandler Sets Another New Razzie Record as His/Her Jack & Jill Is the First Film Ever to Sweep All Ten Categories!". Golden Raspberry Awards. Archived from the original on April 6, 2016.
  41. ^ a b "Razzies: Adam Sandler and Sarah Palin make the list". Entertainment Weekly. February 25, 2012. Retrieved April 28, 2021.
  42. ^ "2011 EDA Awards Nominees". Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  43. ^ "ASCAP Honors Top Film and Television Music Composers at 27th Annual Awards Celebration" (Press release). ASCAP. June 28, 2012. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  44. ^ "Results". Golden Schmoes. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  45. ^ Marmaduke, Lauren (December 14, 2011). "The Houston Film Critics Society's Best (and Worst) of 2011". Houston Press. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  46. ^ "2011 IFCS Awards". Internet Film Critics Society. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  47. ^ Stanhope, Kate (April 1, 2012). "Justin Bieber, Katy Perry Win Kids' Choice Awards; Halle Berry Gets Slimed". TV Guide. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  48. ^ "'Iron Lady' and 'Kevin' Top Women Film Critics' Awards". IndieWire. December 19, 2011. Retrieved November 5, 2021.
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