Starring: Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Bella Thorne
After a disastrous first date, single parents Jim (Sandler) and Lauren (Barrymore) walk away with bad opinions of one another and no intention to meet ever again. Jim's boss (Dan Patrick) also happens to be in a relationship with Lauren's friend (Wendi McLendon-Covey) but when they break up, there's a romantic trip to Africa going spare and both Jim and Lauren cross paths again on a different continent with their families in tow.
In this life, there are only three things that are certain. Death, taxes and that a sizeable amount of the population don't like Adam Sandler movies. Obviously, enough people do that there seems to be a continuing market for his work (specifically, his low-brow but slightly schmaltzy schtick) but for every fan there are probably two haters. Sandler has shown good work in the past, even in his standard comic performances. Even a large number of his detractors like The Wedding Singer (1998) and there is enjoyment to be found in Fifty First Dates (2004) and in those two, there's a unifying factor. Pairing up Adam Sandler with Drew Barrymore. Ten years since they last shared billing with each other and the results are...not good.
Of course, it's not that Barrymore and Sandler don't at least have some chemistry. They don't set the screen ablaze with passion but they work well together. The problem is that the material is so poor. The sheer quantity of jokes about masturbation and big breasts are too manifest for even the most hormonally-frustrated of teenage boys. There are also jokes that simply don't make much sense. There's a recurring thread of gags relating to how unattractive both Drew Barrymore and Bella Thorne are before they're both glamourised over the course of the plot and seen as much more beautiful (Barrymore changes her clothes, Thorne has her hair re-styled. The "ugly duckling" characters in Hollywood movies usually don't work as unattractive. This is just particularly egregious).
Topping this off is a somewhat embarrassing portrayal of Africa. The gentle nature of the film helps ease its portrayal of the continent as racist, but this is basically every stereotype of Africa that you could cram into a film without being blatantly offensive. Note I haven't mentioned a country yet. It seems to be South Africa (it was where the film was shot, its set at Sun City, which shares its name with a well-known South African resort South African cricketer Dale Steyn makes a cameo) but comes off as part of the lazy assumption that Africa is a small number of stock ideas that could apply to any random place on a map of the continent, since no single nation is ever named.
After a solid block of toothless stereotypes Africa, the film's final act falls more towards schmaltz and plays for far too long. It's a good chance to show the cast have talent as performers and they do (Terry Crews, who appears throughout as an African club singer is surprisingly one of the few off of his game in this regard) but it's dragged with too many late plot twists that simply seemed to be endless padding for a film which felt too long to begin with.
Blended may not be the most cringe-inducingly bad effort of Sandler's career, but it definitely makes for uncomfortable viewing at times. A running-gag of one of the kids bumping his head against the wall as he sleeps and Barrymore carries him to bed is not funny in the slightest and just comes off as horrifically painful in both senses of the word. Adam Sandler has shown that he has talent and is definitely a likeable guy but it would be nice to see Sandler stop wasting some of that talent in his umpteenth film of this ilk and try to find something more substantive.
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