Film: Gambling with their futures...
4:20pm Friday 16th May 2008
What Happens in Vegas (12A) Romantic comedy about strangers who get rich and hitched in Vegas, starring Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher.
THE expression, What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas', conjures up a veritable jackpot of shed inhibitions, insane indulgence, and gleeful debauchery. And if you can remember any of it, you probably weren't there.
But what would happen if a few crazy moments in Sin City not only didn't stay' there but also followed you all the way back home and threatened to turn your life upside down? That's the set-up that explodes into a series of outrageous consequences for two sexy, if wildly mismatched, strangers in the comedy, What Happens in Vegas.
For charismatic party guy Jack Fuller (Ashton Kutcher) and buttoned-up commodities trader Joy McNally (Cameron Diaz), a rowdy weekend coincidentally shared in Las Vegas should have, by all rights, ended up being little more than a random blur.
That is, if these two vacationing New Yorkers didn't have a signed marriage licence staring them in the face to shockingly remind them of the giant misstep they took while feeling no pain, Vegas-style.
Stacking the deck, not only did Jack and Joy tie the knot, but later won a mind-blowing three million dollars in a slot machine bonanza. Well, Jack won it with Joy's quarter. At the machine she'd already been playing. Or was it the other way around? And whose loot is it anyway?
Therein lies the weird hand dealt this bickering pair who take their predicament back to Manhattan, only to be sentenced by the intractable Judge Whopper (Dennis Miller) to "six months hard marriage."
Despite the hapless protests of Jack's best friend and legal counsel Steve Hater' Hader (Rob Corddry), Whopper refuses to grant Jack and Joy an annulment, freezes the prize booty, and forces the irresponsible couple to prove they have done everything humanly possible to make their impromptu marriage work. This includes co-habitation, weekly counselling sessions, and doing something the old school Whopper believes Jack and Joy's "generation" hates to do: try.
Otherwise, the judge guarantees, the three million bucks will stay caught up in a legal battle so long and expensive no one but the lawyers will ever see a penny of it.
Can Jack and Joy survive their six months of wedded bliss' - without killing each other first -and ultimately cash in for the big payoff? Or will the fiery sparks that ricochet between them actually ignite, turning a fake relationship into something astonishingly real?
In the end, what happens in What Happens in Vegas may prove the biggest surprise of all.
Cameron Diaz thinks the film's title evokes quite the vivid scenario. "Vegas is a 24-hour city," she says. "You can't tell what time it is, you don't know how much money you've spent, how much you've drunk, how much you've slept, and so on. There's kind of a built in safety net, though - because anything is possible in Vegas, you're given the permission to basically do anything there that you'd probably never do anyplace else at any other time in your life."
"It's really like a free pass to be your wildest, craziest, funniest self," declares Ashton Kutcher, "because no one's supposed to ever find out what you do there."
Diaz and Kutcher were both excited by the chance to bring the film's what if' scenario to life.
"I loved the script's grass is always greener' theme," confirms Diaz. "People in relationships often think their single friends are the lucky ones, while the singles just want to be in a relationship. In life, it's ultimately about finding your own happiness. It's not enough to be happy just because you're in a relationship; first you need to be happy with yourself. That's something I think my character Joy learns the hard way."
"Jack and Joy are kind of flip sides of the same coin," says Kutcher. "They're both relationship challenged, even though Jack's pretty relaxed about it all while Joy's more uptight. Romantically, they've both been looking for the wrong thing, which is probably what draws them to each other to begin with - even if they are really, really hammered at the time."
Director Tom Vaughan was taken with Dana Fox's script after reading just the first act. "The story set-up is so incredibly dynamic, fast-paced, and inventive, it absolutely had me hooked by page 30 or 40," says Vaughan. "It's a classic sparring comedy with two characters who, deep down, are wildly drawn to each other, though of course they can't see it."