From the UK Guardian:
Adam Sandler’s latest comedy is shallow, scatological, lazy, crass and brazenly commercial. That’s not news. But Jack and Jill may also mark something more significant: the moment when cinematic cross-dressing officially stops being funny. Sandler plays both twins of the title, and his Jill is pretty much what you would fear: just a screechingly irritating man in bad drag. Jill pulls lumps of wax out of her ears, leaves big sweaty patches on the bed, and defecates noisily after eating Mexican food. It’s funny because it’s a woman doing it, you see? if you had to identify the exact second of comic death, it would probably come at the close of a scene in which Jack disguises himself as Jill (so, Sandler without a wig puts on a wig) in order to seduce Al Pacino but then the melons fall out of his bra!
In 2000, the American Film Institute voted Some Like It Hot the best American comedy ever made, with Tootsie in second place, so you could say the only direction for the cross-dressing movie was downwards. but in the past decade or so, the decline has become a meteoric plummet, to the extent that drag is now the last resort of the lowest-aiming multiplex mass-market entertainer. some of them have even made a career out of it – Martin Lawrence has three Big Momma’s House films to his name; Tyler Perry’s “Madea” alter-ego has appeared in seven movies. but for the majority, their comic potency shrivelled the moment they stepped into size 10 stilettos. John Travolta hasn’t been taken seriously since Hairspray, Williams hasn’t been funny since Mrs Doubtfire,White Chicks and The Hot Chick scotched any notion that either Shawn and Marlon Wayans or Rob Schneider were the future of comedy, and Eddie Murphy’s career is only just recovering from Norbit, in which his monstrously overweight “Rasputia” helped him to an unprecedented hat-trick of Razzie awards for worst actor, worst supporting actor and worst supporting actress.
Guys dressing as girls has been a dramatic tradition long before cinema, of course. you could trace the lineage through pantomime, vaudeville, Shakespeare, Japanese Noh, Greek and Norse mythology, back to the first neanderthal who thought it would be a laugh to try on his partner’s mammoth-skin scarf. but while one half of this tradition led to drag – an art form in which the performer’s wit and individuality are to the fore, in which the frock isn’t the whole picture – the other half has brought us to the sorry state we are in now. Admittedly, some of the screen’s manliest actors have ticked with transvestite turns, including Cary Grant (I was a Male War Bride), Michael Caine (Dressed to Kill), Arnold Schwarzenegger (Junior) and Robert De Niro (Stardust). Johnny Depp has done it twice (Ed Wood, Before Night Falls), Robert Downey Jr did it well (that is, badly) in the recent Sherlock Holmes.
Continued here.
What a drag: Death Of The Cross-Dressing Comedy
Related posts:
- Alex Reid stops cross-dressing for Chantelle Houghton
- Cross-dressing Robbers Sought in A. Turen Handbag Heist
- Cross-dressing homeless man gets celebrity party in Austin
- Punchline Magazine Blog » Internet radio spot Pandora adds comedy to its collection! – Comedy Blog, Comedy News, and all things in Stand Up Comedy.
- Beyonce’s Baby Bump is the Star of the VMA’s, While Gaga is a Drag in Drag