This may be the most widely derided film I have reviewed so far. Which was shocking to me because I really enjoyed it. I read on Wikipedia that “proponents” found the sexual chemistry between Leoni and Sandler’s characters compelling, but no mention of the crazy sparks between Sandler and Vega’s characters. I was agog during their, to quote Sandler’s character, “unsatisfied” scenes, it seemed so much that they were driving towards, that the audience was primed to want to see them arrive at, that their characters desperately desired a double entendre of a climax. And yet they had their reasons, their brutally tragic reasons for declining that culmination of their relationship. Leachman plays a wonderful grandmotherly role in the spirit of Zoidberg (“subjugated, yet honored!"), delivering laughs and hard truths. Leoni’s character plays the perfect put-upon white savior character, who just made me want to gag sometimes, but without being so loathsome that I couldn’t empathize with her dark night of the soul, with her despair over what she had broken. It’s a shame her character had to spend so much time learning gratitude and how to take responsibility for her actions toward her family that she never truly understood how terrible she had been to those outside, but there’s only so much that can be fit in a two hour film.

And anyway, it’s not as if this is my only unpopular opinion.