Review: What Happens In Vegas…

Jack (Ashton Kutcher) and Joy (Cameron Diaz) meet each other while drowning their sorrows on a drunken night in Vegas (He’s just been fired by his father, she’s just been dumped by her corporate bore of a boyfriend). They wake up with a splitting headache, finding themselves married to each other and discovering that they’re none too pleased about it. After a painless decision to get divorced as soon as possible, matters are complicated when Jack wins three million dollars from a slot machine by using Joy’s quarter.

If that’s not unbelievable enough already, just wait for the courtroom scene with the judge who commands them to say married for six months just because he doesn’t like how they are destroying the sanctity of marriage. And, if you’re not yet rolling your eyes in disbelief, wait for the moment when Joy turns down one and a half million dollars on principle. We need some sort of believable structure for the comedy to be attached to, but What Happens in Vegas is just one long unlikely conceit.

At least Cameron and Ashton look like they’re having fun. Neither seem like people we know, just two oddly alienated good-looking excuses for real humans, but they fit together as a pair. Events play out with timed precision, and before long that happy ending hits us. We’re expected to cheer, I’m sure, but I couldn’t care less.

Director Tom Vaughan, who previously made Cold Feet and Starter For Ten, leaves no discernable stamp on his American feature debut. This rom com is inoffensively mundane. Will appeal to some before disappearing into the black hole at the back of the video store.