Blended

Recently divorced mom Lauren and widowed dad Jim let their friends push them into a blind date, which goes disastrously wrong. Unsurprisingly, neither wants to see the other ever again. However, fate intervenes when both Jim and Lauren, unbeknownst to each other, purchase one-half of the same vacation package at a South African resort for families, during spring break. They and their children are forced to share the same romantic suite and participate in a slew of family activities together.

Critics nearly universally panned Blended, taking particular aim at its racial caricatures, its sentimental excess, and its willingness to coast on the Sandler-Barrymore chemistry without doing anything interesting with it. The audience reaction told a very different story — families who actually saw it responded warmly, creating one of the sharpest critic-versus-viewer splits in Sandler's career. A small minority of reviewers, mostly outside the American prestige press, argued the film's old-fashioned, clean-cut family values were exactly the point.