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What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” is a brilliant marketing slogan.  After years of pushing family friendly ideas of slick magic shows and roller coasters, Sin City decided to get back to its much earlier and much more malicious roots.  That is the setting for the latest ‘opposites attract’ comedy What Happens in Vegas.

Ashton is Jack our slacker ‘poster boy’, a guy so incompetent he gets fired from his father’s company.  He and his best buddy (Rob Corddry) decide they need a trip to Las Vegas to shake up their world.  On the other side of the movie is Joy (Cameron Diaz), a Wall Street up and comer who is brutally dumped at her fiancé birthday party.  Her and her best gal pal decide to take that ‘sin’ plunge in Sin City.  Well, this foursome ‘cute meet’ and end up getting penthouse suites at the same hotel.  Well, one drunken morning later and our lovely dumped gal has found out that she is married to Mr. Incompetent.  As they discuss getting an annulment, he puts her quarter into the slot machine and it comes up a 3 million-dollar winner.

Now, back in NYC, both are fighting to get the money and the judge (Dennis Miller) sentences them to six months of marriage and counseling.  He is tired of people coming in to get divorces without even trying marriage.

So is the set-up for the film.

The rest of What Happens in Vegas is only a surprise if you have never seen a movie.  We know we are going to get all the male and female bonding jokes.  There is the obligatory scene of male uncleanness. Are we going to get the toilet seat up/down joke?  Wanna guess. 

They battle each other then eventually realize that by deception each could get all the money.  Eventually they find common ground and fall for each other.  Haven’t we seen all of this before?

This trifle is just the bon-bon flick that Ashton Kutcher should be making.  It is simple and winning, like his persona.  He could make these kinds of movies for years and his fan base would never complain.  Cameron Diaz has done this role about a billion times before and brings nothing truly fresh to the proceedings.  And Rob Corddry just came off as mean.

Though the writing feels very sit-com, it still works more than it doesn’t.  There are some genuine laughs, the bulk of which comes when they are plotting against each other.  Once the romance starts, the different tone hurts the overall proceedings. What Happens in Vegas is just another early summer movie, usually forgotten by the Fourth of July.

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