Metacritic reviews

Blended isn’t Sandler’s funniest movie or his best, but it is a big step up from the dregs he’s been churning out, a messy, shaggy dog of a comedy that you can’t help but like even as it sheds all over your house.

Thanks to Sandler, Barrymore, and South Africa’s natural beauty, Blended is far more palatable and bearable than it has any right to be; it’s fluff that rises to the level of innocuous disposability.

Blended director Frank Coraci, a Happy Madison vet, is too much of a company man to elevate this passion-phobic rom-com beyond something more than an above-average Sandler production.

The movie feels like a throwback; it brings to mind the blandly crappy movies Sandler made 10 years ago, rather than the brazenly crappy movies he makes today. In that sense, it’s a double disappointment, neither consistently funny nor endurance-testing.

Blended is simply more of the stale Sandler formula that audiences wisely haven't sought as much.

Blended is an Adam Sandler movie that isn't as bad as you feared it would be.

Embodying the same wholesomeness that has informed most of his screen work, gross-out comedies included, it feels like a tentative next step in Sandler’s evolving screen persona, one that has gone from good-hearted dolt to bumbling man-child to middle-aged father.

The filmmakers only bother to lay out comedic set pieces that are simply family-friendly big-budget variations on Jackass stunts.

The laziness is what irks me most about Blended. Everything from the re-teaming of the two stars and their "Wedding Singer" director, Frank Coraci, reeks of moviemaking by checklist.

Barrymore is still cute, and she and Sandler at least seem to like each other as they get on with the grim business of rom-com contrivance.