Movie Review: What Happens In Vegas

 

“What Happens in Vegas” is a film that views marriage as a combat sport.  Forced into a temporary marriage of inconvience, characters played by Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz, come out fighting.  They play every dirty trick on each other, until, yes, they fall in love.  However, the film is only interested in the dirty tricks.  The love stuff is shrugged off with a sneer.

Dana Fox’s screenplay pivots on impulsive decisions by two dissimilar New Yorkers to vacation in Las Vegas. Jack Fuller (Kutcher), a party-hearty underachiever, takes this trip as a reward to himself after being fired by his father (Treat Williams) from a furniture-manufacturing job. Joy McNally (Diaz), a stressed-for-success commodities trader, flies to Sin City to salve her bruised ego after being dumped by her fiance (Jason Sudeikis) in earshot of other guests at his surprise birthday party.

Each character is accompanied by a best buddy — a second-rate lawyer (Rob Corddry) for Jack, a wisecracking cynic (Lake Bell) for Joy — but that doesn’t stop them ending a long evening’s drunken revelry with a spur-of-the-moment visit to a Vegas wedding chapel. Come the morning after, the regretful marrieds are ready to file for an annulment once they return home. But then Jack plays a slot machine with Joy’s quarter, and wins a $3 million jackpot.

Back in the big Apple, an acerbic judge (Dennis Miller) with conservative ideas about the sanctity of matrimony refuses to resolve the dispute over the $3 million jackpot, and challenges them to make the union work by sentencing them to “six months hard marriage,” with the first one who asks out losing the cash.

So ultra-organized Joy must move into Jack’s sloppy apartment. And the slackerish Jack must pretend to enjoy life with a woman who makes impossible demands, like putting down the toilet seat and not dumping his dirty laundry everywhere.

Naturally, each character tries to undermine the other, in the hope of ending the cohabitation and, more important, seizing the money. Just as naturally, the antagonists gradually warm to each other, pushed steadily closer as Joy charms members of Jack’s family, and Jack ingratiates himself to Joy’s boss (Dennis Farina).

There are no big surprises, and only a handful of unexpected developments. But Kutcher and Diaz are undeniably appealing as they go through familiar motions in custom-fitted roles, and the scene-stealing supporting players (Corddry, Bell, Farina and Queen Latifah as a marriage counselor) go about their petty larceny with amusing adroitness. Brit-born helmer Tom Vaughan (”Starter for 10″) tries too hard at first to emphasize free-wheeling zaniness, but settles into a smoother groove to keep this utterly disposable but lightly entertaining pic afloat.

Tech values are mostly unremarkable. Las Vegas scenes are conspicuously lacking in the snap and pizzazz auds have come to expect from interludes in the gambling mecca.

Genre: Comedy

Rating: PG-13

Trailer

Official Website

Actors/Actresses: Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Lake Bell

Our Verdict:

Save your money.  Wait and rent it.