The stars appeal, but this romcom never strays from tired cliches, writes Michael Dwyer
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS
Directed by Tom Vaughan. Starring Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher, Rob Corddry, Lake Bell, Treat Williams, Jason Sudeikis, Dennis Farina, Dennis Miller, Queen Latifah 15A cert, gen release, 98 min **
OPERATING from the breathtakingly original premise that opposites attract, What Happens in Vegas throws together a mismatched couple with nothing in common beyond their initial resistance to each other.
Jack (Ashton Kutcher), a carpenter, is such a slacker that his father (Treat Williams) sacks him from his furniture firm. Joy (Cameron Diaz) is a Wall Street trader ascending the corporate ladder when her fiance (Jason Sudeikis) drops her because of her obsession with organising every detail of their lives. By sheer coincidence, Jack decides to take a holiday in Las Vegas with his best friend (Rob Corddry) just as Joy goes there with her sassy pal (Lake Bell).
Their parallel lines converge when both pairs are booked into the same hotel room. A drunken night on the town ends in Jack and Joy impulsively getting married. It gets more complicated the next day when he uses one of her coins in a slot machine, hits the jackpot and wins $3 million.
They decide to get an annulment, but conservative Judge Whopper (Dennis Miller) refuses, sentencing them to "six months hard marriage" and freezing their winnings. The antagonism between Jack and Joy festers when she has to move into his disorderly apartment. She is irked that he keeps the toilet seat up and she spends so much time in the bathroom that he removes the door.
Anyone even vaguely familiar with the romcom formula will anticipate that this unhappy couple will get to know each other better and that hate will turn to love, and What Happens in Vegas is formulaic to a fault. As with last week's Made of Honor, it relies heavily on the chemistry of the stars to carry a slender, overtly familiar screenplay.
Diaz and Kutcher respond with such lively performances that they seem to be having more fun than their audience, especially in the slapstick sequences.
Tom Vaughan, the movie's British director who showed promise with the more appealing Starter for 10, offers nothing by way of wit, pacing or imagination. The soundtrack is a lazy compilation of songs (Hot Chocolate's You Sexy Thing yet again) which have been overworked in so many other movies that they feel as jaded and cliched as the screenplay.
