Sandler manages to bring some freshness to an old, tired story

Comedians live for the laughter of the audience. It's what they do and it is what separates good comedians from the mediocre and bad.

Adam Sandler has run the gauntlet from very funny with "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore," and very bad with monstrosities like "Click." Now his newest offering is "Jack and Jill," his take on both a twin comedy and a cross-dressing comedy.

I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of this movie. I expected it to be similar to Sandler's more recent movies. In other words, not very funny.

However, there were several very funny scenes. One of these scenes was featured in the trailer, however, which diminished it slightly.

Sandler unfortunately manages to be funny here not by writing original material but by using classic comedy material.

The cross-dressing comedy has been overdone – that doesn't stop Sandler's scenes from being funny, even if it is from sheer delivery. Twin comedy is less done though, and I'd rather watch Sandler's twin comedy than the Olsen twins.

Though Sandler himself is ostensibly the star and the costar, his performance is eclipsed by Al Pacino's role as himself. Pacino plays himself as quite eccentric and more than a little crazy.

He is quite taken with Jill and makes every attempt to be with her, helping to drive one of the film's central plots. Pacino obviously threw himself wholeheartedly into the role, showing a very good ability to make fun of himself.

Sandler, as in his movie "Grown Ups," attempts to make his movie a little more "family-friendly" with a couple of morals at the end of the story. Unfortunately, this falls flat.

At the end of the movie, Jill, after having rejected Pacino multiple times, ends up with someone whom she did not expect.

I could see where Sandler was going for a "you never know where you'll find true love" angle, but it just came off as "women will never be happy unless they have a man in their life."

The other problem with tacking a moral on at the end of a story is that you end up with all of the other family un-friendly things that the characters do to undermine your moral.

The closing scene tried to make it clear that "family is the most important thing," but this attempt was undermined by the awful way in which Jack treats his sister Jill throughout the movie.

Despite the storm of cliché's and the overdone jokes, Sandler was able to make it funny. He is a talented actor and was able to overcome the poor script with near-perfect delivery.

And for a comedy, "Jack and Jill" does what it promised – it made me laugh. As George Burns said, "What's the secret to good comedy? Timing."