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Isn’t it the worst when you see a trailer for a movie that you’re looking forward to and it’s, well, a piece of crap? Sometimes it turns out that the movie is actually fantastic and just the victim of a bad trailer (such as Get Him to the Greek), and sometimes that movie is just a flop (such as Funny People). I’ll be saving you that risk from now on, as I’ll be checking out the films with the lousiest trailers and seeing whether it’s just poor editing that made the trailer terrible, or if no amount of editing could make it good. Today’s study: 2011’s insta-punchline Jack and Jill.

As the trailer opens, we see that Adam Sandler lives in a gigantic house with Katie Holmes, who must have gotten a gigantic paycheck to be in this movie. Looks like Adam Sandler’s not too thrilled that his sister Jill is coming to stay. The second-rate voice over guy dramatically tells us that it’s his twin sister, and boy she must be obnoxious! He goes all the way out to the airport to get her and she calls him fat! This is going to be a painful holiday for Adam Sandler, even though they act similarly while watching a movie (as the announcer says it’s “from the producers of Just Go With It and Grown Ups”). She’s tactless when they invite a homeless person over for Thanksgiving, she’s too heavy to ride a horse, and she’s staying through Chanukah! Oy vey!

Katie Holmes comes back, telling Adam Sandler to be nicer to himself (spoiler alert: it’s all she does in the actual movie as well) as female Adam Sandler drives a riding lawnmower over a bed of flowers! Electric Light Orchestra kicks in as the two of them go to a basketball game, when Al Pacino shows up, wishing he got a paycheck as large as Adam Sandler’s (or even Katie Holmes’s. Let’s be honest, probably even Allen Covert got a larger paycheck). So then they end up on a cruise ship and jump rope. Female Adam Sandler talks about how she loves family time, and then destroys male Adam Sandler’s pool, much to his chagrin. Al Pacino then is inexplicably talking to male Adam Sandler, and he makes a meta joke, because Adam Sandler also plays Jill! The trailer ends with people punching female Adam Sandler and male Adam Sandler enjoying it. Oh, the joy of siblings!

My main issue with the trailer (besides the fact that it’s abysmally unfunny), in comparison to the film, is that Jill is supposed to be this disgusting, overbearing, ignorant beast of a woman, who leaves nothing but destruction in her wake. Even in the film, since it’s told from Jack’s point-of-view, we’re supposed to be so distraught by Jill’s actions that we can’t imagine how anyone could put up with her for a second. But that’s not who Jill is! She’s clearly, to anyone over the age of seven, someone with emotional problems that are just minor inconveniences to Jack. Jack’s so privileged that when there’s a minor monkey wrench, he blows it out of proportion. He’s really an evil character, and Jill deserves our sympathy. If only the movie realized that, instead of having Jack be the put-upon character. Jill’s the one who’s put-upon: the one thing she looks forward to each year (visiting her brother) is spoiled with Jack’s selfish, uncaring ways.

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