Dir. Tom Vaughan, US, 2008, 99 mins,
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah
Review by Carol Allen
This is a romantic comedy in the tradition of "His Girl Friday" or indeed "The Taming of the Shrew" in that it's about the feuding couple, who hate each other but we know are made for each other and will end up in total bliss.
The title comes from the American expression "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas", but in the case of Joy (Diaz) and Jack (Kutcher) it doesn't. He's been sacked by his dad (Treat Williams) for being a sloppy furniture maker, she's been dumped by her hyper critical fiancé (Jason Sudeikis).They bump into each other on a wild weekend in Las Vegas, get thoroughly tanked up and three hours later in a mad impulsive moment get married. The following day they agree it was a indeed a mad moment and are about to go for an annulment, until Jack puts the coin Joy was about to play into a Vegas slot machine and hits the $3 million jackpot. And then battle commences as they both lay claim to the money.
On the plus side the film has two very attractive young leading actors in Diaz and Kutcher. She is breathtakingly pretty and wears some very fetching outfits, while he from time to time displays his impressively toned torso. And it has its moments of comedy, as in the preachy judge (Dennis Miller), who refuses them an annulment and division of spoils on the grounds that their generation don't take life seriously enough and sentences them to six months "hard marriage" living together, during which they have to prove they are trying to make the marriage work in weekly visits to a marriage counsellor Dr Twitchell (Latifah) - a role which virtually never allows her to stir from her counsellor's chair. Conflicts between the uptight, well organised Joy and the slobby, smelly Jack over such things as ownership of the bathroom and their mutual efforts to fool to Twitchell into thinking that the other one is cheating and thus lay claim to the money also raise the odd smile. But basically it isn't nearly funny enough. The fact that they will eventually fall in love is inevitable, given the genre. The interest is in how they get there and frankly it isn't interesting enough. Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer (His Girl Friday) and indeed Shakespeare wrote far better gags.
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