BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore make really cute romantic comedies. At the same time, they can both make some less than stellar stuff too. Sandler’s best comedies were his early stuff when he was just being over the top goofy and adolescent. He matured into a “kind of funny dad” for the most part. I’m not a dad and I’m still young. I like R rated comedies and silly stuff. He seems to make movies for dads, families and for kids. I’m always going to like Sandler and look back at the stuff I connected with as a young kid. He just doesn’t make movies for me anymore. Drew Barrymore doesn’t seem to pop up all that often. I know she’s friends with Cameron Diaz, but it feels like she’s getting roles that I’d much rather see Drew in. She’d have been great in “Bad Teacher”. She’s funny, endearing, and I still dig her in stuff like “Whip It”. At times they can both make perfectly solid comedies on their own, but when they join forces it always makes for quality. It’s as if they bring the best out of each other or they just save their best material for each other. “Wedding Singer” was great and how can you not like “50 First Dates”? No matter how much I don’t generally get into their movies these days it’s hard to not have to give their latest movie “Blended” a chance. Sadly, it’s not on par. Despite a great supporting cast made up of the normal Sandler crew, Bella Thorne, Emma Fuhrmann, Terry Crews, Joel McHale, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Kevin Nealon, and Shaquille O'Neal it just didn’t hit the mark. It was basically a mixed up version of “The Brady Bunch”. Sandler is a widowed father of a three daughters and Drew is a divorced mother of two boys. Adam and Drew go on a blind date and hate each other but still end up crossing paths. This somehow leads to them both going on the same trip to Africa and being forced to share a big suite together. Slowly and surely they start to bond. The movie is fully of cheesy jokes, a lot that have been seen and heard in Sandler movies before. By half way through the film it was exhausting. The kids were cute and did well in the roles they were given, but the writing for them was hokey. It was like a two hour 80’s sitcom with the “edginess” of left over Bart Simpson jokes. It was the jokes that the writers of the iconic show decided were lame and ditched around the time Bill Clinton took over the White House. I expected a sling shot gag to come at any time. It was rough for me, but I expect families and younger kids enjoyed it. It didn’t have the same magic as their other two movies. It was okay at best. It’s close to two hours long, which is way longer than it needed to be. If you’re a family looking for a movie I’m sure they are better ones to go with. If you’re a parent looking for a safe movie for their kids to watch then you should be okay with this one. It’s nothing too crazy or anything they’d not see in a normal episode of “Two and a Half Men” or “Everybody Loves Raymond”. Sadly, those sitcoms are more entertaining. I wanted to like this movie. I really did. C-
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