What Happens In Vegas

Director: Tom Vaughan

Perhaps the most intelligent thing about this film, even if it is yet again about Vegas, is that it casts Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher — two actors great to look at and known to throw themselves body and soul, literally, into comedy.

The problem is the film, which neither has body nor soul. A trite storyline about a couple who find themselves married after a drunken binge one night in Vegas, richer by $3 million the morning after, and fighting over who keeps it seconds later, is made triter by a judge who believes in “marriage as an institution” and orders them to stay together for at least six months to try it out.

Joy (Diaz) and Jack (Kutcher) spend the time doing everything from stealing toilet seats to bathroom doors to peeing in the kitchen sink to racing each other to the marriage counsellor appointment, as the judge has otherwise threatened to seal up $3 million in litigation. And that’s the best the scriptwriter can come up with, not bothering to add anything in the dialogue department apart from one more line about “not trying to be perfect” any more.

What happens in Vegas, they say, stays in Vegas. What Happens in Vegas strays everywhere but.