Jack and Jill (Combo Pack)

Shame on Adam Sandler and shame on every one who makes a cameo in this daft movie. Shame on Regis Philbin, on Tim Meadows, on Nick Swardson, on Katie Holmes, on Drew Carey, on Shaquille O'Neil, on Kobe Bryant, on Norm MacDonald, on Johnny Depp, on Jared from the Subway commercials, on John McEnroe, on Christie Brinkley, on Michael Irvin, on Bruce Genner, on David Spade, on all of Sandler's freeloading friends and, especially, shame on Al Pacino. They actively participated in making one of the worst movies of all time and deserve to have their noses rubbed in it.

What happened to the guy that we used to love? Adam Sandler used to be so funny. Now it's just sad. Film critic friend of mine Rich Bonaduce said it best when pointed out that Sandler has become the sell-out comedian character that he played in 'Funny People,' making one bad family movie after another. Hopefully Sandler's story quickly follows that of his character in 'Funny People' (not the cancer part - I'd never wish that on anyone) and something causes a change of heart that helps him return to his potential.

In 'Jack and Jill,' Sandler plays both of the titular characters, twins Jack and Jill. Successful Jack makes commercials in L.A., has a cute wife (Katie Holmes) and two kids. Overweight Jill lives alone in New York City, has no friends and converses more with her talking bird than anyone else. Jill is so overpowering that after spending twenty-something years of their lives together, Jack wants nothing to do with her. When she comes out to L.A. for Thanksgiving, she just won't leave, so Jack plots to set Jill up with a man that will steal her away. This doesn't sound too bad, but when you realize that it takes more than 25 minutes of this 91-minute movie to get to anything that resembles a plot, you might want to reconsider giving this trainwreck a shot.

Jack is trying to get a major advertising campaign underway with Dunkin' Donuts. With their new promotion – Dunkacino – they won't settle for anyone but Al Pacino doing the ads. While trying to get Al to come about for the campaign, Jack introduces him to Jill and Al immediately falls obsessively in love with her - only she finds him revolting. So Jack must use his annoying sister to land the job – even stooping as low as dressing in drag and pretending to be Jill. Ugh. And it only gets worse.

From a guy who used to love Sandler's movies - especially 'Billy Madison' and 'Happy Gilmore' - I now hate the guy. Stooping to cross-dressing "comedy" lower than that of Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, and Tyler Perry, it simply doesn't come any worse than 'Jack and Jill.' It's such a bad movie that I find it offensive that anyone involved agreed to do the film on the premise that audiences would find it entertaining. But the only thing more insulting than the crap they pass off as entertainment is how insensitive many of the gags are. Mind you, I'm not the type of person that cares about political correctness, but 25 percent of the jokes are racially and morally insensitive. Several jokes are supposed to come about from a homeless white guy being invited to dinner, but none are funny. In fact, the only thing those jokes do is make Jill out to be a bigoted fool. When they're not cracking jokes about homeless people, overweight people, Jews, illegal aliens, and Indians, they're banking on poop/fart jokes and the stupid physical humor of people getting hit and falling down.

After opening with random interviews of now grown up twins, the narrative kicks off with Sandler's character shooting a commercial spot for Pepto Bismol – which is perfectly fitting because you'll need to down a whole bottle of the nasty pink stuff just to stomach 'Jack and Jill.'

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

Sony has placed 'Jack and Jill' in a Blu-ray/DVD/Ultraviolet combo pack. The two-disc blue vortex keepcase houses a Region-A/B/C BD-50 and a DVD of the film. The case slides vertically into a slick and shiny cardboard slipcase. Included is a paper with a unique download code for your useless Ultraviolet copy. A Sony vanity reel and trailers for 'The Smurfs,' 'Zookeeper,' 'Grown Ups' and 'The Mighty Macs' play before the main menu, but all are skippable.

'Jack and Jill' has been given a 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 encode that's presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Although it's not bad, the video quality isn't as great as most other Sony Blu-rays.

The image is always clean and clear, but it's not consistently sharp and detailed. It fluctuates back and forth for the entire presentation. If I had to give an estimate, I'd say 80 percent is top-notch and 20 percent not so much. Aside from the definition, everything else is great.

Fleshtones are natural and lifelike. Colors are vibrant and alive, never over-saturated. Black levels are fantastic, always appearing rich and deep. There's also nice dimension to the picture. It never looks flat.

Compression issues like artifacts, bands, aliasing and noise aren't an issue. DNR and edge enhancement have not been applied.

'Jack and Jill' is presented with both English and French 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio tracks. No matter which language you listen to, the effects and music mix are going to be a let-down.

The vocals in this unimpressive track are just fine. They're clear, clean and well-balanced with the other tracks. The problems lie within the music and effects. This lossless non-dynamic track is a real waste, always sounding flat and appearing to come from the front only. Given the generic comedic score, you'd expect it to playfully pop around the channels, but it never does. It's bland.

The effects – or lack thereof – suffer this same problem. There is literally only one scene that warrants audio that grabs your attention and makes you think, 'That's nice' – when Al Pacino shows up at the cruise liner in his helicopter. The sounds of whizzing propeller blades is the only thing in the entire movie that made strong use of the rear and surround speakers. Other than that, it's lifeless.

• Previews - I find it odd that when you finish the film, the menu that follows the credits immediately takes you to the available trailers and not the actual special features. All of the pre-menu trailers are included along with 'Soul Surfer' and 'Just Go With It.'


• Deleted Scenes (HD, 19 min.) - Watch 13 deleted or extended unfinished and time-coded scenes. Most of them are pointless commercial scenes for Royal Caribbean cruise lines, a few disturbingly show Jill in her skivvies or bathing suit, others show deleted or extended cameo scenes (like Kevin Nealon, Nick Swardson, Shaq, Norm MacDonald), but the worst of them all shows Jill having a bowel movement on a central character's grandmother. As you might have predicted, none of them is worth watching.


• Laughing is Contagious – Blooper Reel (HD, 4 min.) - The last of the bloopers shows Pacino calling his commercial within the movie "a ludicrous mess" – which perfectly describes 'Jack and Jill.' No zero-star movie is ever going to warrant worthy outtakes.


• Look Who Stopped By (HD, 9 min.) - Adam Sandler has a lot of famous friends and he wants you to know it. In case you didn't see them all throughout the movie, here's a feature dedicated solely to showing you just how many of them appear in the movie. Yawn.


• Boys Will Be Girls (HD, 4 min.) - You'd think that this feature was all about showing how Sandler played both characters at the same time, how he was pieced into the same frame twice, and so forth – but it doesn't. It's all about how Sandler became a woman. This task shouldn't have been hard because in 'Jack and Jill' he basically plays his old 'SNL' "Gap girl" character. The silliest part is when Katie Holmes seriously talks about how great it was to be able to discuss girl problems with Sandler on-set because he understood them from the shoot. Give me a break.

The only thing worse than watching 'Jack and Jill' is having to watch it a second time - which I've now done. Adam Sandler, who once made me laugh more than any other comedic actor, continues to pump out joyless formulaic garbage. Sandler's comedies get progressively worse, 'Jack and Jill' being the worst of them all. I wish that Hollywood functioned like sporting events – when actors or directors commit "fouls," they should be penalized. Playing central characters in drag should be worthy of steep fines and suspension from the big screen. That's how bad 'Jack and Jill' is. From Sony, I expected a better Blu-ray release. The video is just fine, but the audio is bland and lifeless. Even with Blu-ray exclusives, the special features are mostly devoted to advertising Royal Caribbean cruise lines, showing how many friends Sandler has and showing generic short EPK reels. The movie itself is worthy of avoiding at all costs and the Blu-ray sure doesn't do anything great to change that.