THE GENERIC ADAM SANDLER MOVIE ** (out of ****) Starring Adam Sandler
BILLY MADISON Also Starring Darren McGavin and Norm MacDonald Directed by Tamra Davis & written by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler 1995 89 min PG13 HAPPY GILMORE Also Starring Christopher McDonald and Bob Barker Directed by Dennis Dugan & written by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler 1996 92 min PG13 THE WATERBOY Also Starring Kathy Bates and Fairuza Balk Directed by Frank Coraci & written by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler 1998 109 min PG13
		BIG DADDY Also Starring Joey Lauren Adams and Jon Stewart Directed by Dennis Dugan & written by Steve Franks, Tim Herlihy, and Adam Sandler 1999 93 min PG13 MR. DEEDS Also Starring Winona Ryder and John Turturro Directed by Steven Brill & written by Tim Herlihy, from the short story “Opera Hat” by Clarence Buddington Kelland and the screenplay “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” by Robert Riskin 2002 96 min PG13
Adam Sandler movies aren’t really bad, they’re just not really movies.  I lump them all together because they’re largely interchangeable.  You could probably compile two hours of good scenes from eight hours of celluloid.  Sandler has a distinctive persona based on acting out many of our anti-social desires, usually in spurts of rage.  He blurts or screams out what we wish we could mumble, punches out everyone we wish we could punch out, and breaks into pieces everything…you get the idea.  Shameless, he also vents all the self-pitying wallowing we try to avoid, begging and groveling.  When he’s not talking in funny, childish voices, he has an easy style and delivery. Sandler almost invariably plays variations of this persona, to one degree or another.  Like so many “Saturday Night Live” movies, a Sandler vehicle is just a collection of sketches.  He’s better on TV or on his juvenile, homophobic, and delightfully idiotic CDs, about how “they’re all gonna laugh at you!” or “let’s try a little reverse action.”  In his films, there are as many bad scenes as good ones, and for every piece of quotable dialogue (“they have many penguins at the zoo!”) something else falls flat.  The level of unreality in each movie is always changing; without knowing the rules of the movie’s universe we can never really tell what’s funny or not. His movies don’t amount to anything, are sloppily made, tediously predictable, and, worst of all, they seldom explore what an intriguing persona Sandler has fashioned (all of those listed here are co-written by former “SNL” writer Tim Herlihy, who now works exclusively in the medium of Sandler).  Instead, Sandler is put through lame exercises in saving the farm, the company, grandma’s house, or some stupid thing or another, usually getting the girl (pretty but uninteresting) along the way.  In “Billy Madison,” he plays a stunted manchild forced to go through grade school again.  In “The Waterboy,” he plays a stunted manchild who discovers he has a secret talent on the football field.  In “Happy Gilmore” he plays a stunted manchild who discovers he has a secret talent for golf.  In “Mr. Deeds” he plays a nice guy from a small town who inherits a pile of money. Sandler is usually joined in amusing cameos by Coen regulars like Steve Buscemi and John Turturro.  Paul Thomas Anderson won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for “Punch Drunk Love,” which, for all its great direction, is a great film because it treats Sandler’s persona seriously. Finished Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005 Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night                                                                                                        Back to home.