THE AISLE SEAT - by Mike McGranaghan
"BLENDED"
Adam Sandler has had pretty good luck teaming with Drew Barrymore onscreen. The Wedding Singer is one of his most popular films, and Fifty First Dates is one of his best. Of course, Sandler is pretty well known for making a disproportionate amount of junk, so that's a low bar to clear. His tendency to make movies with friends – both in front of and behind the camera – has led to a certain laziness on his part. An oft-made criticism is that his films feel like glorified home movies. Blended, on DVD and Blu-Ray August 26, isn't much different, although, to its credit, this is far from his worst effort.
It's easy to lose confidence from the opening scene, which finds widower Jim (Sandler) experiencing a bad blind date with divorcee Lauren (Barrymore). He's taken her to a Hooters restaurant; she ends up spewing French onion soup all over the table. Theirs is not a match made in Heaven. Then - through a contrived, implausible, and thoroughly absurd series of events I won't even bother trying to explain - they find themselves and their respective children stuck together on vacation at an African resort. Blended picks up a little bit here. Jim teaches Lauren's boys how to play baseball and deal with puberty. She helps his oldest daughter Hilary (Bella Thorne) shed her severe tomboy image and embrace her burgeoning womanhood. Before long, Jim and Lauren are warming up to one another.
At its core, Blended is a sweet-natured, if predictable, story about the difficulties of joining two families together. There are some undeniably touching scenes on this front. The story shows that Lauren, who has two sons, is ill-equipped to handle things such as her teenager developing an interest in sex. Jim, who has three daughters, has no clue how to deal with Hilary getting her period, and he unintentionally confines her to boyish clothes and an unflattering haircut. He also doesn't know what to do for his middle daughter, who pretends her deceased mother is still around. While they initially loathe each other, being forced together allows Jim to help Lauren and vice versa. They put away their mutual contempt for the sake of the children, only to find that they share the same sorts of insecurities about single parenting. Blended has some recognition that no parent knows everything, and that we can all use a little help from time to time. That's a touching idea.
Had it stayed on that note, the movie would have been fine. However, it is ultimately undone by the inclusion of Sandler’s trademark lowbrow humor, which he seems to feel a compulsive need to force into almost everything he does. (The fact that he usually works with friends probably means that no one challenges him to get out of his comfort zone.) The fat jokes, gay jokes, and crotch injury jokes that mark most of Sandler's work are woefully out of place here, and they often impede on the more sincere moments. In other words, Blended kind of undercuts its own strengths. As just one instance, a poignant scene between Jim and Lauren is interrupted by a gratuitous shot of rhinos having sex in the background. Admittedly, there's less of that sort of thing than normal, but it's still present. The screenplay is credited to Ivan Menchell and Clare Sera, but the fingerprints of Sandler and his cohorts are all over the film itself, suggesting that a rewrite was done to make it more in the Grown Ups vein. That's a shame, because the crass comedy wrecks a lot of otherwise charming/meaningful moments.
The two leads once again demonstrate good chemistry, and Terry Crews has a hilarious supporting role as the resort's crazy-eyed musical host, who pops up to serenade people at every opportunity. But Blended also has an excess of distracting product placement (Jim works at Dick's Sporting Goods, eats at Hooters, etc.) and an unfunny subplot involving a horny couple Jim and Lauren keep running into. At the end of the day, the movie is a mixed bag. Adam Sandler fans who are members of blended families may love it the most. All others will wish Blended had the courage to include more identifiable human moments and fewer screwing rhinos.
(
out of four)
Blu-Ray Features:
Blended will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on August 26. It will also be available for digital download and rental.
The bonus features are relatively minimal. “Adam and Drew: Back Together Again” is a three-minute segment devoted to the reuniting stars, while “Bella's Big Makeover” takes about the same amount of time to explore Bella Thorne's transformation into a tomboy. There are short segments related to safari animals and a parasailing scene. The gag reel is fairly amusing, and there are a handful of deleted scenes, most notably a series of alternate jokes shot for a sequence inside Jim and Lauren's romantic bedroom suite.
An UltraViolet copy of the movie is included, too.
Blended is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, and language. The running time is 1 hour and 57 minutes.
Buy a copy of my book, "Straight-Up Blatant: Musings From The Aisle Seat," on sale now at Lulu.com! Paperback and Kindle editions also available at Amazon.com!
