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Tim Briody: From the moment the first trailer hit, we were all expecting Adam Sandler to finally have another Little Nicky. He's long overdue. While Jack & Jill is his lowest live-action comedy opening since Little Nicky was released this weekend 11 years ago (really?), it's still way better than we figured. His fanbase has been shockingly loyal through the years, and not even the double barrel distraction of Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim (I'm only level 10!) didn't hurt this opening. It's going to crater hard from here, but it's certainly not the epic flop we were hoping for.

Bruce Hall: This is me sighing. Do I really have to talk about this? I have no idea how this happened. Maybe Tower Heist was too intellectual for everyone. With all these earthquakes, trouble in the Middle East, global social unrest, maybe the Apocalypse is coming.

Stock up on creamed corn and zombie repellant, I guess.

Either way, Sandler's man-child routine never did it for me. I don't begrudge him his success; if someone was willing to pay me that kind of money to make movies for head injury patients, my moral compass would stop working, too. But I have to give it up for him, because while this is not one Sandler's more impressive openings, unless you're one of his mutant fans, this probably beat your expectations. Jack and Jill might make do with sloppy fourths, sevenths or ninths over the next few weeks until it mercifully returns to Hell, where it belongs. Then it will clean up on home video and somehow be profitable. And then the earth will probably explode. It seems you've won again, Mister Sandler.

Matthew Huntley: It was only this week that I realized Jack & Jill was rated PG, instead of Sandler's usual PG-13, so this may have something to do with the larger-than-expected opening. Perhaps parents who already took their kids to see Puss In Boots needed another family-friendly movie to turn their brain off at, but if that's the case, is this what what they really went and saw?! Granted, I, like most people on this thread, am judging the movie before I see it, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist (or even a half-witted high school dropout) to realize this is probably garbage. How did Sony do it? By front-loading the marketing with two pictures of Adam Sandler (their number one star) and focusing on the holiday theme. We all know how hard it is to sell a movie, but in this case, it seemed fairly easy. Too easy.

Reagen Sulewski: While it's easy (and proper!) to make "fall of the culture" jokes, it pays to remember here that for most people, Adam Sandler has never failed them, Two and a Half Men's ascendency to the top of the TV ratings is justified, and Spam is a mighty fine meal. The broad, desperate strokes of this film were a selling point, not a deterrence. Now, maybe after this he's going to take a hit, but Sandler gets the benefit of the doubt from the public because of how many hits he's given them.

Brett Beach: To follow up on Reagan's explanation, in "defense" of Sandler, it is true that when he is giving the audience a Sandler comedy, everyone who is already a fan knows what to expect and with the exception of Little Nicky, they all perform wonderfully to superwonderfully (is it any surprise that I like Little Nicky more than just about any of his earliest films?). What he has done is w/o "growing up", managed to mature ever so slightly the Sandler brand to encompass at first being a kind of sort of role model to a kid (Big Daddy) to eventually having a family and kids (Grown Ups and Jack and Jill). He has also allowed himself to become the butt of the jokes whether getting kicked in the balls many times (in Just Go With It) or having a Sandler proxy take the beating (Jill). I have no desire to see this film, but I have to credit Sandler with being shrewd (if slightly cynical) at eternally tweaking his formula to grow with the 20-something frat boys who loved Billy Madison and are now nearing 40.

David Mumpower: Even as a self-professed Adam Sandler fan, I was taken aback by the sheer horror of the Jack & Jill commercials. This is an abomination and yet its opening weekend box office exceeds that of Funny People, a movie that, you know, tried. We live in an era where dumb comedy is not only safer but also more lucrative. As a character stated in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, in the battle between art and commerce, art is getting its ass kicked. Jack & Jill is the latest proof of this. The fact that this happened only a short time after I had finally gotten over Dave Matthews' coconut handling in Just Go With It only makes the situation worse.

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