Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Adam Sandler is always surprising us. That guy continually has new ideas up his sleeve, which is good considering he seems to always have another movie right around the corner. While 2012’s That’s My Boy can’t call itself a critical or box office success, it does have its moments. There’s the typical jokes and signature Sandler heart buried deep down, plus Sandler and star Andy Samberg are fun together on-screen. The usual cast of Sandler pals like Will Forte, Rachel Dratch, and Nick Swardson stop by for fun, as does Vanilla Ice. Oh, but he’s not even the tip of the weird iceberg. At first it seemed promising that Leighton Meester was cast in a comedy to help her career grow outside of Gossip Girl. But then her storyline took a turn for the disgusting.
Meester stars as Todd’s (Samberg) fiancee, a gal from a rich family that he just can’t seem to fit in with — especially once his estranged dad Donny, who had Todd after he hooked up with a teacher when he was a teenager, shows up right before the wedding. Silly premise, sure. And while things go wrong for Todd throughout the whole movie, they go really, really wrong in a reveal near the end. Donny starts to suspect that Jamie (Meester) isn’t being faithful to Todd so he catches her in the act…with her own brother, played by Milo Ventimiglia. That’s right, the brother and sister are fully hooking up. Yikes.
What would Ventimiglia’s character Jack Pearson from This Is Us have to say about this? The doting husband and father would be beyond disgusted with such a revelation. Seeing him occupy such a sweet role in the NBC drama almost made us forget about this ridiculous blip, but not quite. Maybe Meester’s role in the new FOX comedy Making History, coming in March, will also help erase this memory from our minds?
The thing that sucks the most about this scene, apart from how the surprise/comedy of it (there is a pretty good Charlie Sheen joke upon Donny’s discovery, we’ll give him that) feels like such a cheap cop out of a reveal, is that Ventimiglia was super buff for the role where he plays a serviceman (well, actually a dancer pretending to be a serviceman) and this plot twist ruins any of the fun in his hotness. A nearly-nude Milo should excite, not repulse. But here we are.
All this is to say, That’s My Boy started as a fun story that took a very wrong turn, right into a dead end. However, we have faith that Meester and Ventimiglia’s current roles will make everything better. The jury is still out on you, Vanilla Ice.
