What Happens in Vegas

Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher are riotously funny together in one of the rare romantic comedies guys are gonna love as much as their dates. When was the last time that happened?

In a summer movie season that looks to be packed with action, comic-book heroes and kid fare, What Happens in Vegas gives us a romantic-comedy break early and often.

By being a smidge smarter than the average date movie, it makes the first-time meeting, the battle of the sexes and the bumpy course of true love entertaining despite overfamiliarity.

Here's a romantic comedy that is goofy, highly implausible, sometimes over the top, often in bad taste, and resolutely empty-headed. In short, it's the best example of its genre to appear on the screen this year.

Goofy cuties Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher are equally matched in a rom-com nicely suited to their sparkly eyed qualities. What Happens in Vegas is about as silly and pleasant as it needs to be, no more, no less.

As There's Something About Mary showed, Cameron Diaz has a gift for physical comedy and she gets to showcase it a bit here.

A battle-of-the-sexes comedy that sometimes hits when it tries to ape the classic screwball comedies of the 1930s, sometimes falls flat when it gets bogged down in the blatant let-it-all-hang-out comedy of today.

Kutcher, who gives his most energized performance to date, and Diaz, darting between the caustic and shrill, look as if they're warming up to groovy hate sex, not love, which may be why the film goes flat the moment it turns friendly.

Though likely not a film you'll remember a month after seeing it, it does hit most of the right notes for a good date flick.

If What Happens in Vegas was meant to establish Kutcher as an adult, it works: He and Diaz are a very appealing match even when the dialogue is at its most treacly, or inane.

One of the great pleasures of moviegoing is the sight of two attractive people locking lips. (Others might say knocking boots, but they are much too literal.)

So what if the plot is a bit far-fetched and the jokes are a bit low-brow, What Happens in Vegas is a perfect first-pairing for comedy veterans Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz.

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and the insipid romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas takes all the attendant clichés as a given.

Here's what happens in What Happens in Vegas: Two talented comic actors breathe life into a movie that should be too familiar to be fun.

There are outrageous and endearing Cameron Diaz romantic comedies, such as There's Something About Mary, and there are middling and forgettable ones, such as What Happens in Vegas.

If you're looking for a blithe romantic comedy with some smarts to go with the screwball antics, then abandon hope all ye who enter here.

It's got some undeniable charms, but a romantic comedy that should have been a no-brainer ends up betrayed by a premise that's brain dead.

Something is terribly off in this drunken-romp-turned-search-for-self, and its name is Ashton Kutcher.

What Happens in Vegas is your basic Hollywood formula romantic comedy, painfully predictable and going for the most obvious laughs, while mostly failing to be very funny.

If movies were party goers, What Happens in Vegas would be the guy who can't crack a smile without a six-pack of Michelob under his belt. Sober, he's a stick in the mud. Sloshed, he won't shut up.

It’s a testament to how good casting can help a film and bad writing can hurt it even more.

The latest uptight chick/slacker dude romantic comedy is so formulaic, you could win big if you placed bets on what's going to happen next.

The only big laugh comes courtesy of a bonus clip during the closing credits, making What Happens in Vegas hardly worth the trip.

You know how some movies feel like they were made by a committee? What Happens in Vegas feels like it was made by checklist.

I like to learn something every day. In this case I discovered a harsh truth. You can have slapstick without the comedy. That's what happens in What Happens in Vegas.

The film is a near-complete playlist of rom-com tropes and clichés.

The only thing unexpected about British director Tom Vaughan's Hollywood debut is the weak chemistry between two likeable actors who, on paper at least, seem perfect for each other.

There are some funny scenes that bring to mind 1989's War of the Roses. But more often this feels like a by-the-book romantic comedy, especially by the time it reaches its predictable conclusion.

Virtually jokeless -- not for want of trying -- this comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher tries to get by on star power where none really exists.

What Happens in Vegas... should have stayed in Vegas. Or in New York, where most of this predictable, uninspired film takes place. Or in Hollywood, where such lamebrained ideas are hatched.

What Happens in Vegas is amusing enough to let slide the fact it is also idiotic, shrill, skin-deep and directed by monkeys.

What saves What Happens is the entertaining support offered by The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry as a balding, lackadaisical lawyer and Lake Bell as an antagonistic glamazon.

A frantic romantic comedy that pays heed to no known rules of plausibility.

Kutcher and Diaz dive into their roles with a manic energy that almost -- almost -- distracts you from the fact that you are watching the same romantic comedy you've watched for 30 years repackaged and resold yet again.

The comic timing and chemistry from Diaz and Kutcher isn't enough to rev up this lemon, which rattles badly during a downshift into sentimentality that wouldn't sound articulate on The Hills.

Diaz and Kutcher make their clichéd characters as likable as possible, you can bet on this: Any movie named after an already-stale ad campaign isn't likely to gamble on the unexpected.

Nothing that raunchy, or that funny, happens in this indifferently written wade through the shoals of love, marriage and divorce, Vegas-style.

The kind of terrible mistake performers as big as Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher usually make at the beginning of their careers, when they're anxious to break into the movies, or at the end, when they're struggling for a comeback.

The movie starring Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz is so obnoxiously predictable you can't respect it in the morning.

What Happens in Vegas can be forwarded directly to the nominating committee of the Golden Raspberry Foundation.

Thanks to the aggressive product placement of What Happens in Vegas, I'll always associate Budweiser with a distinct lack of laughter. I'm sure that's not what Anheuser-Busch had in mind!

Director Tom Vaughan leans heavily on montages and has little sense of how to draw comedy out of the predictable situations penned by screenwriter Dana Fox.

While aiming for an intoxicating blend of high-energy comedy, the romantic comedy's predictable story, and the lack of chemistry between stars Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher, don't leave it with much of a kick.

Laughs are few and far between in the innuendo-laden script attributed to Dana Fox, who's also responsible for the reprehensible The Wedding Date.

Good-looking actors aren't enough when the screenplay relies on threadbare bits involving stinky bedclothes, toilet seats and women who switch from sexy underwear to flesh-tone bras and "PMS pants."

Any movie shameless enough to take its now-a-cliche name from an already mega-successful marketing campaign isn't trying very hard.

What Happens in Vegas does not come up with any new twists. It doesn't even try. As a result, this would-be comedy winds up inducing a massive, movie-long sense of deja vu.

If you don't see where this is going, you've never seen a movie. Sorry it had to be this one.

As romantic-comedy premises go, this one isn't bad. But Dana Fox's screenplay waits until its final moments to develop Joy and Jack beyond their one-note personalities.

It's called What Happens in Vegas, but it should have been called What Happens in Hollywood as it pretty much defines contrived studio comedy.

Buried in this staid, stereotypical excuse for a likeable lover's spat is a decent idea for a movie. Since all involved can't find it, it's up to the audience to. They'll be lost as well.

When it was over I felt vaguely embarrassed. I wasn't just leaving a movie theater. I was taking a walk of shame.

From here on out, I will think of the trailer for the disastrous What Happens in Vegas, starring Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz, as a short film. Loved the short. Hated the feature.

What Happens in Vegas should have stayed in Vegas. Or better still, it should have remained, unreleased, on the studio shelf, which is what should happen normally when films are this bad.

Like many Vegas weddings, this mean-spirited "romantic comedy" only makes sense if you're drunk:

Considering that the title of the movie was conceived by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, it's not a huge surprise that What Happens in Vegas is stocked with product placement.

My big beef is that the movie is so relentlessly loud and insult-based it reminded me of a weekend I camped with my family when I was about 10.

What Happens in Vegas is like an old vaudeville act, two comics at close range throwing pies in one another’s faces endlessly. There’s a reason that vaudeville died.

Both the actors and the characters they play are a terrible mismatch, but then screenwriter Dana Fox has something of a fetish for awkward couplings: Her last go-round, The Wedding Date, was girl-meets-paid male escort.