Review of Blended (2014) by Harry W — 16 Nov 2014

Despite its critical unpopularity, as Blended paired the strong comic duo of Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore for the third time, it was definitely worth the shot.

The trailer for Blended really did not pay it any favours. It depicted nothing more than a repetitive series of recycled crude gags without much of a sense of originality. It takes no time before Blended reveals that my guess was perfectly accurate.

Blended's attempts at having a story which is the least bit meaningful does not work at all because it is too senselessly thin-plotted for its own good. The screenplay in Blended is very lazily assembled. The dialogue is clearly very forced and Frank Coraci tries to play that off as one of the gimmicks. But it just feels lazy. The plot itself is nothing more than an excuse to push the characters over to Africa while they take a bunch of lame crude slapstick gags with them. The story itself is very cheaply crafted one composed of nothing more than crude humour and a premise largely reminiscent of Adam Sandler's prior comedy film Just Go With It as the relationship shared with Jim Friedman and Lauren Reynolds' children capitalises on a similar concept of bonding with a new fatherly figure. It is unoriginal and lacking in insight, but worse it is ground that has already been treaded by Adam Sandler films in ways both better and worse.

The stupendous nature of the screenplay is almost so bad that it's good, and there are actually times that I admit to laughing at the absolute idiocy in the film because the jokes try way too hard and therefore manage to push too hard at some moments in time. I laughed a couple of times and enjoyed how easy the film was to watch, but the lacklustre quality of Frank Coraci's directorial work and the cheaply conceived screenplay leave little to the imagination.

There is nice African scenery in the film which makes it a good looking feature, but despite that and a couple of decent visual gags, Blended comes up short in essentially every area. There are a few minor gimmicks at the sight of the characters getting injured, but it is just too stale in the end and it wears thin way too fast. The film gets annoying pretty early on and so do the characters which means that seeing them get injured it essentially the primary benefit of the feature, yet it doesn't happen often enough. For a film which boasts crude slapstick as its primary benefit, there is nowhere near enough of it and an abundance of focus on the lacklustre script which doesn't make sense.

The performances of the cast evoke a rather mixed response as well, but as a whole they don't transcend the poor limitations of the material. The main issue is that most people are miscast with the material failing to match their talents in any appropriate way.

Adam Sandler's performance in Blended is just wrong. I mean, in comparison to practically every other comic performance he has ever given, by the point of Blended he has essentially run dry of any charisma. His line delivery is way too subtle and monotonous for his own good, and it is just empty of any energy. I really don't understand what is going on with Adam Sandler in Blended, but considering that his performances in Grown Ups 2 and Jack & Jill have both seen him decrease in energy, it does not look bright for the future. His over the top performance in That's My Boy may have won him a Golden Raspberry award and his ridiculous tone of voice can be annoying at times, but it stands out far better than his performances in Blended. While the crude slapstick in Blended is over the top, his performance is way too far from it which is just senseless because it fails to capture the mood of the film at all. Even the few moments in Blended where he tries to go over the top are just not the slightest bit convincing because his lack of energy is nothing but depressing in Blended. If Adam Sandler's performance found itself nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor I would not be surprised because this really is one of his worst performances as it is so dry and bereft of any comic success. Adam Sandler is nothing but dull in Blended, and so he is far from an asset in the story which is a rare thing for him.

Drew Barrymore is decent though. She is a welcome presence to see back in a comedy because she always has a naturally likable persona to her, and even though the character she is stuck with proves to be nothing more than a cheesy comic archetype, her energy manages to fit into the role decently enough. She isn't as funny as she is in her better comedy films, but it is at least nice to see her working back in comic material again. Drew Barrymore brings a likable sense of spirit to her role which partially makes up for the lack of energy in Adam Sandler's performance.

Terry Crews is a semi-decent presence in Blended, although ultimately it is a shame that the filming schedule of the film interfered with his role in The Expendables 3 which meant that he ended up having little screen time in the latter film. His role is clearly a stereotype, but his over the top energy brings a certain sense of stereotypical spirit to the part even if he his role is little more than a gimmick.

Joel McHale is a great presence. Since I'm a massive fan of his work on Community, seeing him an Adam Sandler film is an interesting step. Even if his performance is very brief, considering that he has proven many times to be able to portray a self-centred egotist, he is able to step back into that archetype easily for Blended.

So Blended is so ridiculously stupid that it has minor moments of humour, but as a whole they are stupid beyond any level of sensibility and it means that the lack of plot or originality is reinforced all too much.