Blended

Frank Coraci also directed The Wedding Singer (1998), which first paired Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore; he shot this third meeting too. The set-up is not symmetrical: Lauren is divorced with two sons, Jim a widower with three daughters, so the five children arrive with two different losses. South Africa was shot at Sun City, the American scenes around Lake Lanier, Buford and Gainesville in Georgia. The running joke is Terry Crews as Nickens, the resort’s house singer, who barges into scenes fronting an a cappella group called Thathoo to sing a summary of what just happened. If that does not land in the first half hour, nothing will: it recurs to the end. A. O. Scott of the New York Times attacked the film for depicting Africans as servile, dancing, drum-playing simpletons, and that view sits in the resort’s whole design, not in a stray gag. Critics and audiences split: Rotten Tomatoes approval stayed near fifteen percent, opening crowds gave it an A minus on CinemaScore. The money came from abroad: 46.3 million dollars at home against 81.7 million. A good fit if you take Nickens’ musical interruptions as the film’s pulse and do not mind long detours into five separate children’s subplots. Not for anyone bothered by Africa used as scenery and local performers as entertainment.