First Comes Liquor, Then Comes Marriage... | Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher marry in haste and repent at leisure in What Happens in Vegas...
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS...
Directed by Tom Vaughan. Starring Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher, Rob Corddry, Lake Bell. Now playing.
1 star
If, as in Voltaire’s formulation, the perfect is indeed the enemy of the good, an equally forceful argument could be made that the genuinely awful is the enemy of the merely bad.
Take, for example, the new Cameron Diaz/Ashton Kutcher romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas... Had it been a truly execrable experience, I could easily have trotted out 500 words denouncing it and we could have all had a good laugh at its expense. Instead, it’s predictably lifeless and laughless, little more than an excuse for a couple of pretty faces to coast through 90 minutes of PG-13 potty jokes, hackneyed men-against-women observational humour, and plot contrivances that would make the most credulous TV sitcom aficionado balk.
There’s not much to say about What Happens in Vegas... that isn’t abundantly clear from looking at the poster. The way those airbrushed, perfect-teethed megastars beam out at you pretty much spells out “generic empty-headed horseshit.” But in case you haven’t seen the commercials, here’s the gist: a computer error throws Joy (Diaz), a tight-assed commodities broker, and Jack (Kutcher), a shiftless, slutty manchild, into the same Vegas hotel room. She’s come to Sin City to salve her jilted heart, he to blow off steam after being fired from his woodworking job by his own father.
Their inhibitions loosened by copious liquor, the unlikely pair hook up and paint the town red. The harsh light of day shows they can’t stand each other, but it’s too late—they’ve gone and gotten themselves hitched. And just as they’re working out the terms of their annulment, Jack drops one of Joy’s quarters into a slot machine and pulls down a $3 million jackpot. Rather than let them end their marriage and split the loot, a cranky judge (Dennis Miller) sentences the couple to remain married for six months, even forcing them to see a marriage counselor (Queen Latifah). With the help of their respective best friends (Lake Bell and Rob Corddry), Joy and Jack connive to make each other violate the marriage contract and provide genuine grounds for divorce. Guess what happens.
All the ingredients of the typical Hollywood rom-com are present, from the faintly obnoxious tone that all too readily gives way to cloying sentimentality, to the wall-to-wall soundtrack tacked on to add another revenue stream to what is obviously nothing more than a factory-assembled, focus-group tested commercial product. Bit parts by familiar faces (Dennis Farina, Treat Williams, a handful of television comedians) proliferate like tame toilet gags, while the marquee players rely on twinkling eyes, dimples, and smirks to translate the aggregation of personality flaws provided by screenwriter Dana Fox into two-dimensional characters.
Dennis Miller, who directly channels his wearisome contrarian persona into the role of the grumpy judge who sets all this jocularity in motion, does deserve special note. Miller’s transformation in recent years from sharp-tongued comedian to gormless right-wing apologist constitutes a compelling argument for his mounting irrelevance, but his so-called performance in this pointless twaddle intimates that the horse done left the barn.
So there you have it: What Happens in Vegas... is not a gruesome cinematic abortion, but a workmanlike time-waster that’s stupid in precisely all the ways you’ve come to expect. So thanks for making it the third highest-grossing film in North America last weekend. Be sure to tell all your friends that it’s not that bad.
