Jack and Jill

Directed by Denis Dugan. Starring Adam Sandler, Katie Holmes, Allen Covert, Nick Swardson, Eugenio Derbez, Al Pacino PG cert, general release, 90 min

ADAM SANDLER plays twins: one an assured male, the other a dysfunctional female. Fish in a barrel present a less challenging target. Barn doors avoid the critical shotgun with greater agility. Sandler might as well walk around with a target chalked on his unlovely back. How can he live with himself? Oh, yeah. There’s the fame, money, security and baffling popular adulation.

For all Mr Sandler's previous offences, Jack and Jillstill comes across as a deliberate attempt to plumb depths that even he has left hitherto unexplored. To make matters worse, he's even dragged poor old Al Pacino into his sordid schemes.

If Sandler and Dennis Dugan, the actor’s regular director, were capable of high-end irony, one might suspect that the film contained at least one, surprisingly twisty joke. Jack Sadelstein, the male version of Sandler, works as a successful advertising director. When it is suggested that Pacino – he’s playing himself – might appear in a commercial for Dunkin Donuts, Jack reacts with bewilderment. The Godfather in an advertisement for fried confectionary? The very thought!

It doesn't seem so preposterous to me, Jack. Pacino is, after all, quite happily playing the love interest to a dragged-up Adam Sandler in this horrid enterprise. That donut promo begins to sound like Dog Day Afternoon.

If you’ve seen any previous Sandler film (or worked as a kindergarten teacher), you probably have some idea what to expect. There are a few poop jokes. A great deal of the humour has a disturbing undercurrent of anger. Attempting to both have and eat a whole cake shop, the film makes fun of Jill’s clumsiness and homeliness while chastising Jack for not appreciating her inner beauty.

What really sets the picture apart from other Sandler films, however, is the sheer laziness of the central performances. To play Jill, the star just pulls on a wig and does what Adam Sandler normally does. If that sounds like your thing then . . . well, I don’t wish to be rude, but I hope the lobotomy is healing nicely.