By Armond White

What Happens in Vegas
Directed by Tom Vaughan


When Cameron Diaz won the 1998 New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress voting for There’s Something About Mary, that consensus choice (for a comedy?) didn’t seem lofty enough. But Diaz has more than earned the acclaim—retroactively. She was outstanding in Being John Malkovich; turned silly into jolly in the Charlie's Angels movies; then gave the least-laughable performance in Gangs of New York. She brought comic-romantic force to The Sweetest Thing and was all there (both hurt and hurtful) in In Her Shoes. Julia Roberts gets more respect, but Diaz has been consistently entertaining. That you can look forward to her cheerfulness makes What Happens In Vegas worth getting off the couch.

Romantic comedies are going through strange mutations as the Judd Apatow contagion spreads throughout Hollywood: Men are reduced to boys and women to bitches—a reflection of the worst hip-hop stereotypes infiltrating the fantasies of rom-com’s typically white middle-class characters, as Superbad proved. The sexes withdraw into their corners (keggers and lunch dates) while audiences check off the clichés. You expect Diaz to somehow swing these conventions. And though her newest film, What Happens In Vegas, doesn’t upgrade or re-conceive rom-com as did Marcos Siega and Daniel Taplitz’s lustrous (but little seen) Chaos Theory, this formulaic comedy is buoyed up and absolutely driven by Diaz’s star personality.

As Wall Street workaholic Joy McNally who rebounds from a break-up by wilding-out in Las Vegas, Diaz clashes cute with Ashton Kutcher portraying Jack Fuller, the slacker son of a judgmental businessman. Something about pairing up Diaz with goofy tall guys (like Thomas Jane in The Sweetest Thing) loosens her undainty energy. Joy and Jack’s one-night mistake (they drunkenly marry in Vegas) brings out their true selves. Her “I’m usually not this fun!” compliments his “I’m usually not this honest!” Claiming equal shares of a $3-million slot-machine win, the regretful newlyweds are prevented from divorcing—a judge defends the sanctity of marriage by freezing the jackpot and sentencing them to “six months hard marriage.” It’s like a Gary Grant-Irene Dunne farce defying the Production Code. Better than the contrived procreation catastrophe of Knocked Up, this plot sets loose Diaz’s Eve and Kutcher’s Adam in the sandbox of modern relations.

Joy and Jack learn that “What happens in Vegas, you pay for when you get back home.” But the secret of Dana Fox’s gender-slapstick screenplay and Tom Vaughan’s unsubtle direction is to keep Joy and Jack in Vegas mind-set (“where you can forget all your troubles and act like an idiot”). Diaz and Kutcher stay slap-happy, playing The Odd Couple–style tricks on each other. And it makes more sense than Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn did in The Break-Up. (Joy has a good routine climbing into Jack’s rank bachelor bed while spraying disinfectant, and he’s funny trying to fake a beat-down with his best buds.)

When Joy downs shots and toasts, “Everyone who has ever been dumped!” (for herself) and “Everyone who has ever been fired!” (for Jack), Diaz comes across no less appealing than Carole Lombard’s socially conscious heiress in My Man Godfrey. Joy has the right principles for recession-era romance, and Diaz has the jackrabbit sexiness to revive screwball comedy. Boyish Kutcher, with his newborn’s lips and small eyes, registers enough confidence and sincerity to man-up for this prize woman. Kutcher’s not agile like Diaz, but he’s game. He teeters between being brash and abashed, frat-boy and gentleman. Jack winds Joy down, and she gives him self-assurance—they’re good for each other and cute together. (Lake Bell and Rob Corddry are also funny as Joy and Jack’s BFFs: they’re a modern, bitter version of the Edward Everett Horton and Helen Broderick sidekicks.)

During the end credits, watch for the extra scenes of Joy and Jack’s drunken debauch. This is hilarious, because It's full of scary/credible comic acting. I was reminded how a friend expressed shock at the artless crudeness of Forgetting Sarah Marshall while I could only respond, “Scuzziness is hip.” All the juvenile acclaim for Apatow’s love of genitalia ignores that he photographs sexual yearning—and body parts—with no grace or fascination, just infantile smirkiness. But when Diaz appears in a short, curve-cupping satin dress and believably knocks Kutcher over, What Happens In Vegas skyrockets over the dumb, scuzzy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Diaz and Kutcher restore the original, ebullient meaning of “sex comedy.” They’re fun to watch, which is a rare thing in this Zellweger, Clooney, Kidman, Gosling, Apatow world.