Jack and Jill

image for Jack and Jill

Short takes

Not recommended under 8, PG to 13 (Violence, crude humour)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Jack and Jill
  • a review of Jack and Jill completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 5 December 2011.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 8 Not recommended due to violence and crude humour
Children aged 8-13 Parental guidance due to violence and crude humour
Children over the age of 13 OK for this age group

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Jack and Jill
Classification: PG
Consumer advice lines: Mild violence, crude humour and infrequent coarse language
Length: 91 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

Jack and Jill Sadelstein (both played by Adam Sandler) are completely opposite twins. Jack is a successful television commercial director with a wife, Erin (Katie Holmes), and two children, Sofia and Gary. Jill is a single no-hoper from the Bronx and her sole aim in life seems to be embarrassing everyone around her.

Jack dreads Jill’s Thanksgiving visit and is horrified when this visit turns into an extended stay. Although Jill has remained single and lonely, she still manages to attract men, including a widowed Mexican called Felipe. However, it is when Al Pacino (playing himself) mysteriously becomes interested in Jill that Jack sees a chance of using the situation to his own advantage.

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Sibling relationships; advertising and celebrity sponsorship

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is a lot of slapstick violence and accidental harm in this movie including:

  • Gary punches Jill
  • Jack and Jill push and shove each other
  • Jack threatens to kill himself
  • Jill knocks Felipe’s grandmother out with a cricket ball
  • Jill hits Grandma with a piñata stick
  • Jack, pretending to be Jill, knocks Al Pacino out and threatens him with a broken bottle. Al then knocks Jack out
  • Jill knocks out a cloakroom attendant
  • Jill and Erin get involved in a pub brawl
  • A computer game is shown where people are shot and blasted over the screen
  • A fight breaks about God and atheism

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of eight, including the following:

  • Gary is a strange child who likes to strap objects to his body including, on different occasions, a chicken leg, a hamster,  a pet bird and a lobster
  • Felipe’s Grandma is quite scary looking – toothless, with big bulging eyes
  • Otto almost eats Jill’s bird Poopsie
  • Jill eats Mexican food and as a result rushes to the toilet to do some ‘chocolate squirties’ and then proceeds to make lots of loud noises
  • Jack dresses up as Jill to go out with Al – this could confuse younger children.
  • Otto a homeless guy is invited to Thanksgiving – he looks very unkempt, with holes in his clothes, etc and sleeps in a tree.
  • Jill gets on to a pony which collapses under her weight

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

The above scenes may also scare or disturb children under the age of eight

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Younger children in this age group may also be worried by some of the above-mentioned scenes

Thirteen and overinfo

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Nothing of concern

Product placement

Frequent product placement includes:

  • Coke
  • American Airlines
  • Sony Vaio
  • Dunkin Donuts
  • Jack Daniels

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

  • Jill calls some girls ‘hookers’
  • A cloakroom attendant adjusts Jack’s false breasts when he dresses as Jill
  • Girls in a bar wearing very revealing clothes mention that they’re not wearing knickers
  • Jill calls a girl ‘cheese tray’ because she gets passed around at all the parties

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

  • both Felipe and Al Pacino show sexual interest in Jill
  • scenes featuring Jill’s large underwear, played for comedy

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

  • Social drinking at parties, in pubs etc.
  • Poopsie the bird drinks from a Jack Daniels bottle
  • Jill is shown drinking out of a bottle

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

  • shit
  • oh my God
  • freakin’
  • a lot of name calling such as freak, psycho, rat face, loser

In a nutshell

Jack and Jill is a. mean-spirited comedy, that even Al Pacino can’t rescue. The crude, sexually suggestive and slapstick humour may appeal to adolescents but overshadows the positive message about the importance of family.

Parents might take the opportunity to discuss:

  • whether it’s really funny to see people being hurt physically and emotionally.
  • safety issues concerning Internet dating
  • the gender and racial stereotyping shown in the film