The trailer for What Happens in Vegas, Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher’s new comedy which hits theaters May 16, is now online, and essentially tells us what a big, ha-ha, middle-of-the-road laffer it’s going to be.

The story centers on two strangers with recent trauma wounds (one’s been dumped, one fired… by his dad) who head to Sin City, party hearty, and then awaken to discover they’ve gotten married. Naturally, as they’re about to split, one wins a
huge jackpot after playing a slot machine with the other’s quarter; a battle for the $3 million payout ensues, with the newlyweds — egged on by their respective best friends, Lake Bell (Over Her Dead Body) and Rob Corddry (The Heartbreak Kid) — devising
ever-escalating schemes to undermine each other and get their hands on
the money.

The pairing of these two stars seems a natural idea, and their sense of timing and the respective comfort levels that they convey will help make things bearable, I suspect. Still, I can’t help but feel that What Happens in Vegas would be a much more interesting (and potentially funny) movie if it weren’t full of the sort of posed comedy (e.g., Kutcher holding up the toilet lid at trailer’s end) we’ve come to expect from such mainstream releases, and didn’t have the pair eventually falling for one another. The psychological temperature of the country is ripe for a ruthless, War of the Roses-type battle of the sexes — something which the ending of The Heartbreak Kid reached for, but didn’t pull off.