OSCAR winner Al Pacino falls horribly from grace playing an exaggerated version of himself in Dennis Dugan's grotesque comedy that casts Adam Sandler as a Los Angeles advertising guru and his crass twin sister.

Two Adam Sandlers for the price of one means twice the mean-spirited barbs, twice the toilet humour and twice the grating on-screen laughter.

With sharper writing, Jack And Jill might have been a sweetly entertaining tale of estranged siblings reuniting in middle age.

Alas, that isn't Sandler's shtick – he plumbs the murky depths of human behaviour, revelling in the uncomfortable moments when characters are reduced to their base instincts.

It's mindboggling that an actor of Pacino's stature would align himself with such a vulgar farrago but to give him credit, he brings more intensity than the rest of the cast combined.The script manages one honest laugh when it highlights the veteran actor's shocking luck at the Oscars by having Jill accidentally shatter his one golden statuette.

Jack And Jill has little to recommend it besides Pacino's insane commitment to such poor material.

It's a toss-up which incarnation of Sandler is more irritating, Holmes is vacuous eye candy and the film's ugly humour is dredged from the sewers of bad taste and political incorrectness.