Let’s Get Blended
“Comedy is subjective”. You’ve probably heard this phrase so many times before, and it’s true. One joke will not land with every individual. Almost every time I look up the Rotten Tomatoes score for a comedy the score is below 60%. And most of the scores that I look up are for movies I actually enjoy. There are some outliers, such as Airplane(1980) and The Nice Guys (2016), but the vast majority just doesn’t seem to resonate with people, and I don’t know why. This goes double with Adam Sandler movies. His name is practically box office poison, and he’s not even a bad actor (he just doesn’t care all the time). If you look up Sandler’s body of work, the only films he’s ever starred in that have a score over 70% out of 33 films are Punch-Drunk Love (2002), The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017), and Uncut Gems (2019). That’s not to say Rotten Tomatoes is the be-all-end-all when it comes to review scores, but it’s the easiest one to look up. I’m not a well-trained movie critique or anything like that, I’m just a young man that loves movies and who’s sister majored in cinema at Virginia Commonwealth University. However, despite knowing of the stigma against Adam Sandler, I was still shocked when I found out that one of his moves had a rather bad score. Let’s talk about Blended.
Blended is a 2014 romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler (of course) and Drew Barrymore, making this the third time the two have starred together. Sandler plays Jim Friedman, a recent widower and a manager at a Dick’s Sporting Goods, while Berrymore plays Lauren Reynolds, a recently divorced woman. The film opens up with the two of them on a blind date at Hooters, and after a brief time, both the characters and audience agree it could’ve gone better. The inciting event is when it’s discovered that Lauren’s friend, Jen (played by Wendy McLendon-Covey), reveals that she has broken up with her boyfriend after finding out that he has children, but only after discovering that they had already paid for a trip to Africa. Lauren manages to convince Jen to give her family her half of her vacation plan, while Jim, whose boss is Jen’s ex, manages to convince him to give him his half. As such, the two families are unwittingly forced into a “blended familymoon” during their weeklong vacation, with the two families learning to bond over time, and Jim and Lauren eventually fall in love.
It’s always a treat to see Sandler and Berrymore onscreen together. The two are real-life friends, and the onscreen chemistry they share is amazing. Whether they’re arguing, laughing, or realizing their love for each other, it always feels genuine. As I’ve stated before, Sandler is not a bad actor, simply one that doesn’t always care. Well, this is certainly a movie he cares in. He comes off as somewhat awkward around women and ill-equipped to raise his three daughters, Hilary (Bella Thorne) as Espn (Emma Fuhrman), and Lou (Alvyia Alyn Lind). This comes across best in how he treats and raises his daughters, acting as if their boys. This is especially the case with Hilary. She is nicknamed Larry by her father and is coerced into participating in various sports teams. While she does enjoy playing sports, a large portion of the story is her learning to become more feminine and strike a balance as she bonds with Lauren and has her first crush on a boy she meets at the resort.
While the movie is overall funny and heart-warming, I do think it’s just as important to bring up some of the movie’s weaker parts. Of course, comedy is subjective, so not all of the jokes are going to land with everyone. While I personally find it funny, Terry Crews constantly pops in as an African man to sing songs and act as comedy relief. This can get grating after a while. The movie also falls into the basic trope of a misunderstanding leading to conflict that starts the third act of the movie. There are actually two big misunderstandings that make the situation worse. The whole third act is a rather small percentage of the movie, but if you hate that trope in general it could still ruin the movie for you.
If there’s anything to take away from this, don’t let critics form your opinion of a film for you, and especially don’t resign a movie to the bargain bin just because you think you don’t like one of the actors. If the overall plot doesn’t sound all that interesting to you, then fine, that’s understandable, don’t pick up this movie, but if you think it sounds even the smallest bit interesting, then please, I ask of you to watch Blended.
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