Luck, laughs run out in ‘What Happens in Vegas’

A Review

Click to Enlarge Browse Aspen Times Photos Ashton Kutcher, left, and Cameron Diaz in a scene from “What Happens in Vegas.” (20th Century Fox)

Carina Chocano
Los Angeles Times
Aspen, CO Colorado
May 12, 2008

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The most annoying expression-turned-official-city-slogan ever is now a major motion picture starring Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. Finally! They play a pair of odd-couple New Yorkers whose initial hostility is followed by more hostility, then by the obligatory race to re-get the girl, this time via water taxi. Happily, the eleventh-hour declaration does not take place in front of a correctly diverse crowd breaking into applause. Small mercies.

And yet, the premise being the teetering house of cards that it is, it’s a wonder we get there at all. Joy McNally (Diaz) is an uptight commodities trader recently dumped by her Wall Street fiance (Jason Sudeikis). Jack Fuller (Kutcher) is a slacker carpenter recently fired by his own father. They come together on the other side of the country when a computer glitch lands them and their respective wise-cracking best friends Tipper (Lake Bell) and Hader (Rob Corddry) in the same Las Vegas hotel room.

Joy and Jack get smashed, realize they’re meant for each other (the parallels pile up in a frenzy of crosscutting action interspersed with insert shots of spewing fountains and loose slots) and wake up married. Horrified, they get into an argument about who is dumping whom — which somehow ends with Jack winning a $3 million jackpot with Joy’s quarter. Next thing you know, they’re in court to determine who gets what. Unfortunately for them, Judge Whopper (Dennis Miller) orders them to “six months hard marriage.” If they fail, he’ll tie up the $3 million in so much litigation neither one would ever see a dime.

You can’t blame the poor romantic comedy genre for contrivances as tortuous as these. It’s not easy these days for writers to find ways to get couples together long enough to realize they love each other. “What Happens in Vegas” is in a sense a classic comedy of remarriage, except that it takes a lot of court-ordered bureaucracy to keep the couple tethered, things like mandated weekly visits to a marriage counselor played by Queen Latifah.

Hokey and forced as it is, “What Happens in Vegas” eventually settles into a rhythm, maybe because Diaz and Kutcher actually look like they have fun together. The movie is just weird and disjointed enough to keep from feeling like an utterly soulless Hollywood product.

“What Happens in Vegas” — Classified: PG-13 for some crude sexual content, and language, including a drug reference. Running time: 99 minutes.

SECOND OPINION
Stephen Hunter
The Washington Post
Not that “What Happens in Vegas” is any kind of great movie, but it’s an exceedingly bright comedy that never makes you feel stupid for enjoying its brisk pacing, smart lines, sound construction and superb comic acting, not only from Ashton Kutcher but from Cameron Diaz.

The gimmick is at least as old as “The 39 Steps”: The plot invents circumstances by which two attractive people, who hold deep aversions to each other, are linked and must contend with all kinds of dilemmas. You know what happens next because you understand how perfect they are for each other.

Kutcher and Diaz meet one drunken evening, and also get married. OK, time for quickie divorce, no harm, no foul; except she gives him a quarter, he feeds it into a slot machine and they win $3 million. Greedily, each tries to get the whole pot, and an irritable judge sentences them to live together, as man and wife, for six months.

The real pleasure in the film comes from the two stars, both of whom put vanity and narcissism far behind and are pleased to let the movie deploy them as less than noble, less than capable, less than smart, less than selfless and less than beautiful and, therefore, more than human.