Wastes A Fantastic Premise

Rating: 4/10 (21 July 2016)

The premise for this movie was, quite frankly, pure genius. It was one of those rare ideas that could be brilliant as either a comedy or a drama. This could have been a harrowing, yet beautiful love story. It could have been a riveting, intelligent comedy. But when they cast Sandler, it became neither.
Instead of telling an almost comically tragic story of love prevailing against impossible odds, they take a real medical condition and stretch it and stretch it until it becomes almost offensively unrealistic. I swear, "Finding Nemo," who only had the condition for laughs, did it better than this movie, which was fueled by its very presence.
The directing is alright. There's rarely anything specifically wrong with directing in a movie. In addition to this, there were multiple occasions where I found myself laughing. There was one occasion that I was cracking up.
But those are the only redeeming qualities. The acting, writing, and realism are all atrocious.
The writing is my biggest problem. Once again, it takes a fantastic premise and wastes it on lesbian jokes. It wastes it on slapstick. It wastes it on vomit jokes. It wastes it on butt crack jokes, and worst of all, it wastes it on Adam Sandler.
Which brings us to the acting. Barrymore was actually very good in this movie; I'm not going to lie. Especially considering the incredible emotion she's tasked with portraying, she's phenomenal. There are very few actors or actresses who can successfully pull off that very specific emotion of realizing that, well, this is the thousandth time you've seen that tape.
That being said, Sandler was absolutely horrible. Over the many, many years he's been making movies, he seems to have mastered the emotions of "happiness" and "weirded out" down to a science. Unfortunately, this movie requires him to feel actual emotion, and play a character that isn't exactly who he is already, and in the department of actually acting, he seems to be at a loss.
Really, really atrocious.