You can also check out our audio review right here.
An early review of What Happens in Vegas gave me hope this film wouldn’t be the fantastic mess I believed it would be based on the trailers. The trailers promised juvenile antics that included peeing in the sink, pouring popcorn down one’s pants and fruit tossing gags. There was hope this was simply a method to get young, ignorant audiences into the theater and the film itself would have some redeeming value that would not have reasonable thinking adults hating themselves.
Hope is lost and I will never again make the same mistake.
What Happens in Vegas is right up there with some of the worst movies I have ever seen. It is just above the worst film I have seen of 2008, which is currently Over Her Dead Body. This is a case of what you see is what you get. People don’t act like this. Idiots don’t act like this. Anyone with one-eighth of a brain doesn’t act like this.
The film centers on a drunken marriage between Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz, two down-on-their-luck everyday people that head to Vegas for a diversion. The twist occurs when one plays the other’s quarter in a slot machine, wins $3 million. When the two can’t agree on how to split the funds they are ultimately sentenced to 6 months of “hard marriage” or the money will be frozen says the judge played by Dennis Miller (proof enough this is a tragedy and not a comedy).
Pushing aside the fact that this is the most asinine and ridiculous thing you could possibly propose, the reason for the judge’s ruling is so he can teach them a lesson about what it means to be married! Wouldn’t this be a lesson better taught to people that actually knew each other?
It’s painful. It’s all so painful and anyone with any kind of common sense will be so mad after watching this movie they should DEMAND their money back. Not even the couple of laughs provided by Lake Bell save this film despite the fact that the funniest scene in the movie comes at the very, very, very end. Perhaps the filmmakers realized when all was said and done that the good movie would have been a relationship with Rob Corddry and Lake Bell and not the dimwits Kutcher and Diaz. Who the hell ever thought this would work? Fire them! Now!
I don’t care if What Happens in Vegas makes $2 or $200 million; this is a film that actually makes people dumber. The fact that movies like this and Over Her Dead Body ever get beyond the idea stage says a lot about where Hollywood stands right now. On top of that, the consideration that this movie is worthy of a second week slot in the Summer season is an insult to every film around it.
If you hate yourself, plop down $11 and commit personal suicide. Otherwise, do whatever you can not to see this film.
