 ‘What happens in Vegas’ makes you laugh but it is predictable, clichéd and simple.
Joy (Cameron Diaz), who has just been dumped by her fiancé, and Jack (Ashton Kutcher), just fired from his job by his own father, meet, get very drunk and end up getting a quickie marriage in Las Vegas.
When they sober up the next day and remember the night before, they decide to get divorced right away, not least because they realise that they can’t stand each other. But just after they decide to get divorced, Jack wins three million dollars on a gaming machine - wait for it! - using Joy’s quarter.
Predictably, a dispute arises which ends up in court and a judge sentences the involuntary couple to six months of hard marriage. If they get through their sentence, the money is split 50-50, but if one of them can’t cope any more and walks out, the other partner gets ALL the money.
What follows is, of course, a harsh competition of one trying to drive the other to breaking point, as well as an exploitation of all possible gender stereotypes. Men’s homes look like something between a pub and a pigsty and it is quite normal for the owner to urinate in the sink; women are disgusted by it all and spend an eternity in the bathroom – since, after all, marriage is a penalty.
In “What happens in Vegas,” marriage is indeed is a penalty of circumstance, though I still wonder why a judge would sentence people to half a year of marriage. Probably this will remain the script writer’s mystery, but was of course is the key to creating the problems necessary for the film’s plot.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the general simplicity of the storyline, the movie doesn’t fail to entertain. Of course, it has an obviously inevitable, completely foreseeable, cheesy ending.
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