Review: Blended

Blended
Cert: 12A / 117 mins / Dir. Frank Coraci




On several occasions throughout Blended, Adam Sandler appears to be genuinely inconvenienced that Warner Bros have scheduled a film-shoot in the middle of his budget-deductable holiday. He mopes from scene to scene, each faux-outraged face and forced sheepish grin becoming a mirthless parody of the role that he's the last person to finally get bored of. Between them, Sandler and Barrymore have now traded in any remaining goodwill they built up with The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates, and are going through the motions in a shamelessly mechanical screenplay full of telegraphed callbacks and Playful Stereotyping™.

Oh, and if you're going to have recurring gags, you need to make sure they're actually jokes to begin with, not just "Woman giggles and shakes breasts. Again".

The natural lifespan of this sort of film is 93 minutes, but Coraci drags the whole sorry affair out to just shy of two hours while the audience get bored waiting for the perfunctory ending. By the time Sandler sings a cutesy ukulele-backed song with the kids over the end credits, you'll be wishing the lions in the safari-sequence had turned on the Jeep-full of lunch that was watching them.

Awkward moments! Sassy kids! A-hole exes! Bitchy best friends! Makeover-reveals! Cameo roles for all the people who had cameo roles in previous films! A bit of pathos (she's dead, you see)!

You've seen it all before; you've seen it all better. A lazy film for a lazy audience.
Fuck it, if Sandler's not going to act like he's interested, I don't see why I should.

Oh yes.



I did not.



The sad part is that it probably does.



Just go away.



....



No. No, I won't.



There isn't.

It still looks better than the Mrs Br*wn's B*ys film though, doesn't it?

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