Jim (Adam Sandler), a single dad, and Lauren (Drew Barrymore), a divorced mother, have a disastrous blind date. He took her to a Hooters “restaurant,” where he spent the evening staring at the TV and the shapely waitresses, secretly drank all her beer, and then bailed under the ridiculous pretext that his house was hit by an avalanche. Nevertheless, fate brings them together again when Jim and Lauren, with their children, end up in the same hotel in Africa. And this time, they can’t escape each other.
Allen Covert makes a cameo appearance here as Ten-Second Tom, his character from “50 First Dates.”
Adam Sandler’s films clearly fall into two categories. On one hand, we have the uninhibited, hooligan-eccentric comedies like “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” and “That’s My Boy.” On the other, we have rom-coms where the same fart-and-burp jokes are served up under the guise of a “cute” comedy about the triumph of family values. This approach made “Big Daddy,” “Grown Ups,” and “Just Go with It” hits. The further we go, the worse the first approach works, and the more often Sandler turns to the second.
Bella Thorne, who plays the eldest of the main character’s daughters, will soon appear in a new version of “The Amityville Horror.”
“Blended,” however, breaks this seemingly established system because it performed very poorly in the Western box office, despite being a prime, typical example of the second, “family” Sandler. Perhaps even too much so – the film feels like a collection of The Best of past Sandler hits. First and foremost, “Just Go with It,” to which a pinch of “Grown Ups” and a handful of “Bedtime Stories” have been added for variety. Single parents, diverse children with problems that desperately need solving (one can’t play baseball and is furious, another dreams of his babysitter, another suffers from looking like a boy, and yet another still communicates with her deceased mother), strange companions, and romantic exoticism – everywhere you look, you’ll either crash into a rhinoceros or chase ostriches.
The Problem with “Blended”
Undoubtedly, this derivative nature cools the ardor and, in general, is tiring, especially considering that the quality of the gags in “Blended” is quite average – Sandler’s writers can do much better. But at some point, especially if you have a weakness for life-affirming stories about family ties, the film changes its negative attitude to a neutral one. After all, the purely Hollywood art of manipulating emotions hasn’t been canceled, and in “Blended,” it’s at a sufficiently high level. Try to remain indifferent when African sunsets turn scarlet in the frame, children’s eyes sparkle and smiles shine, Drew Barrymore touchingly huddles, portraying a high schooler in love, and all this is set to a carefully selected soundtrack.
A Lack of Soul
In all of this, however, there is much more technical skill than soul, and this is the main reason why Sandler and Barrymore’s previous joint projects – “The Wedding Singer” and “50 First Dates” – have already become classics of the genre, while “Blended” has no chance of such an honor.hokhlov