OFF THE SHELF – Issue # 19: THE ADAM SANDLER COLLECTION
I couldn’t have timed this much better really could I, what with Adam Sandler’s latest comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry just debuting in the US (to the usual expectations of critical hatred and box office gold I would imagine!).Anyway, knowing that there’s more haters of Sandler and his movies out there then there is actual fans (and if that slice of sarcasm is actually true, who the hell is going to see his movies to the extent that most are $100 million smashes?) I was worried about how to sell this week’s issue to you. So I started reading this book about how to “sell” yourself and your work better, because I really want a better response to Off the Shelf, especially with me being alone in my love for Adam Sandler movies it’d seem, and it says that you should always entice people with the best bits like a movie trailer before handing them the whole ‘product’. So… okay… let me give it a try: In this week’s column there is one mention of child-kidnapping, one of paedophilia and advice about how to get oral sex whilst showing your “sensitive” side. No, I don’t know how I managed to work them into an issue about Adam Sandler either! And I’m not particularly proud of myself either – even though it looks like I am by the fact that I’m paying mention to it in the opening paragraph! I’m just trying a different “marketing” approach that’s all – although the sort of people I’ll entice with a mention of child-kidnapping, one of paedophilia and advice about how to get oral sex probably aren’t the sort of readers I want anyway. Oh, this is so difficult…
I’m a big Adam Sandler fan. I enjoy the hell out of his movies and I think the guy himself is a genuinely likeable, extremely talented individual. I own most of his available output (I’m missing Reign Over Me, his latest venture into dramatic work as it’s not out on DVD yet – and we just pretend that Going Overboard doesn’t exist, okay?!?) and I’m very much looking forward to his critically derided aforementioned new movie (which, people keep ignoring me about this but shouldn’t the makers of the Australian Paul Hogan movie, Strange Bedfellows, consider suing for a credit? Check out the IMDB!) this summer.
I don’t go collecting every single film Adam Sandler features in, only the ones with him as lead. This is for two very good reasons: 1) If you start collecting all the ones he’s got small or cameo roles in then you’re going to end up with a lot of Rob Schneider and David Spade movies, and nobody deserves that and 2) Nobody has fun with the stale screenwriting three act convention of hero meets girl/adversary steps in to affect goals and romance/difficulties are overcome in time for happy ending like Adam Sandler. For me his films are at their absolute best when he’s playing a misunderstood protagonist who has a short-fuse when it comes to anger management who meets a gorgeous girl but she doesn’t see him for who he really is until he starts to woo her by being himself and then she falls head over heels in love with him. Then there’s an obnoxious prick who shows up and wants to stand in the way of whatever it is Sandler’s character wants to achieve before racing to the uplifting finale, a few famous comedians showing up along the way, and it’s all set to a cracking soft rock soundtrack of forgotten 70s and 80s musical gems!
It may be “uncool” to dig him – especially with a filmography so slap-hazard and hit-and-miss riddled (seven genuinely great films, four outright disasters and five misfires that are either a bit naff or deserving of reappraisal) but I do. I always seem to either have a great time with Sandler’s films or come away with the clarity to see where it went wrong and what could have been done better or tighter or stronger.
These are the DVDs that make up my Adam Sandler Collection:
Airheads
3 really poor heavy-metal rockers (Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi and Sandler) go to a radio station to force the DJ to play their record and end up taking him and the staff hostage “by accident” and start a ‘siege’ situation. We’re not talking the greatest comedy of all times here people but, it’s not that bad either and deserves a bit more love then it actually gets. I mean, come on, can you not soften your heart a little towards an inoffensive little film with a back up cast that includes the never-bad Joe Mantegna, Michael McKean (he of Spinal Tap!), Judd ‘Breakfast Club’ Nelson, Chris Farley (who’ll make sure you never look at a nipple piercing without wincing EVER again!) and Seinfeld co-star/part-time racist Michael Richards as a station co-worker who has seen Die Hard one too many times. Check it out on an empty Friday night. You won’t feel ripped-off, but you won’t remember much about it an hour after watching it. One of those films that I own out of a sense of completion to the particular collection I’m building, but not necessarily something I would have rushed out to purchase otherwise!Anger Management
Oh it pains me to write about this film, it really does. God, remember where you first heard about this film project and how cool it sounded that Adam Sandler, a comedian famous for playing characters with anger-issues, was teaming up with screen legend Jack Nicholson, who was then infamous for his own personal anger issues when he smashed up a member of Joe Public’s car with one of his golf clubs during a road-rage incident, in a comedy about… get this… Anger Management! Remember the feeling of utter movie-buff driven glee that poured out of you when you saw the cast list for this movie – Luis Guzman, Woody Harrelson, John Turturro, John C. Reilly and babes like Heather Graham and Marisa Tomei? Or when you first saw the trailer and it had that bit in it with John C. Reilly playing a Buddhist Monk who gets into a down and dirty fight with Sandler’s character? Great huh? And then… and then… excuse me, I get a little emotional remembering this horrible incident… and then do you remember the pain you felt when you saw this properly for the first time and realised that all the good gags were in the trailer, that the gags in the trailer that weren’t that good (but you hoped would be improved upon with a sense of context) didn’t get any better, that the film was kind of insulting to your intelligence and not in the good “dumb” way that most of Sandler’s movies play and, worst of all, that the film’s third act “twist” and post 9/11 [Guilliani-cameoing] emotionally manipulative climax felt like a kick to your nuts to distract you whilst director Peter Segal stole your sense of humour. I was so excited about seeing this film that, when the release date got pushed back here in the UK, I imported the Region 1 DVD a good four to five months before its release. I remember staring agog at this when I watched it the first time, thinking “How the hell did they manage to fuck this up?” Most definitely owned out of a sense of completion. Great opening act with Sandler’s Dave Buznik on the plane and the whole 9/11 “paranoia” thing. Everything after that is pretty much a cinematic drop-kick to your face with a steel-toe-capped boot!Big Daddy
You know what? I know it’s not cool to like this film and I know it’s even less cool to admit that your emotions are stirred in the manipulative courtroom climax, but I really don’t give a shit. This is a guilty pleasure in every sense asides from the fact that I don’t feel guilty about the fact that the film gives me pleasure. It’s a big, dumb high concept comedy (allegedly conceived by a one-line thought consisting of “What if circumstances required Happy Gilmore to raise your infant?”) without any responsible attitude or basis in reality (characters depicting social service agents act to feed the plot, not to feed the basis’ of their real-life roles) but, honestly, who gives a fuck right? This is the poster-child for modern Adam Sandler movies – completely derided and kicked around despite doing exactly what it set out to do; make you laugh, pull at your heartstrings a little and get your foot-tapping to the cracking soundtrack (Sheryl Crowe’s murdering of a Guns and Roses classic is discounted on the grounds of taste, though!). It’s not an Oscar contender and it’s not out to change the world of movies but then what Adam Sandler movie is? It’s a thoroughly entertaining 89 minutes and, as I said, I’m a sucker for little kids in movies begging not to be taken away from the adults they love (even more so if said child is being taken away by a really evil fucker – No, screenwriters of Saw V, this is not a suggestion for a future plot! Please!) so the climax to this film is gold for me, huh? However, I do admit, any film that hires Jon Stewart and uses him so poorly does deserve a little bit of derision!Billy Madison
An early, post-SNL, outing for Sandler and his regular SNL-writer Tim Herlihy as they set out to shape their [then] fortunes in mainstream comedy movies with this story of the heir to the Madison Hotel millions, Billy (Sandler), who has spent his life living off his father’s riches and indulging in women and booze instead of getting a formal education. When his father decides to hand the company over to the scumbag vice-president (The West Wing’s Bradley Whitford) because he doesn’t think his son is capable, Billy makes his father the bet of a lifetime; he’ll redo his entire formal education, grades one through to twelve, in one twenty-four week period and if he passes every single class and grade then the company is his. Watch the film these days and in amongst it’s scattershot, hit and miss, humour the film plays quite pertinently to the current horrors of living in a world in which Paris Hilton is the world’s “favourite celebrity” (media coverage of her release from prison was three times that of Nelson Mandela – think about that?!?). On top of that, there’s an awesome Steve Buscemi cameo (which he would follow-up in a lot more Sandler movies to come) and a superb soundtrack featuring ELO, The Jackson 5, The Cars, Culture Club, The Ramones and Styx. Asides from that, it’s an about average comedy but with a few gags that, when they hit, hit particularly fucking hard on the ol’ funny bone!Bulletproof
This was a film bought for me by an old girlfriend who knew I was into Adam Sandler movies and spotted that I didn’t own this one. For a good reason – but I didn’t have the heart to tell her and don’t want to get rid of it now out of a sense of completion and for nostalgic personal reasons (I mean, come on, you don’t throw away or give away gifts someone got you… Do you?). This is one of those amateurishly conceived and even more amateurishly written pieces that is predominantly designed as a showcase for a burgeoning [post] SNL talent (Sandler) and an [alleged] ‘hot property’ (Damon Wayans) who in fact was nothing more than tepid considering he’d blown his post-Last Boy Scout buzz on egotistical behaviour, vanity projects and poor career choices – this being one of them! It’s the sort of film where you’ve got a big name actor (here it’s James Caan) coasting it for the cheque just to ‘help’ the film, where the love interest is introduced but screams “third-act-double-cross”, where uninspired action sequences are inserted because the ‘every-ten-minutes’ rule applies and not because they fit, where the two leads get so desperate for a laugh they resort to Whitney Houston impressions that were already stale in 1996 and/or doing stereotypical and ever staler ‘gay’ impersonations and, finally, where the “big” shoot-out is in the bad guy’s luxurious mansion with opulent stair-cases to jump/fall/be pushed down. There’s a little charm to the film in an its-so-bad-that-its-actually-good sort of way but if we’re going to be up front and honest it’s really an action film without any entertaining action and a comedy without any real laughs. A bit of an embarrassing title on my shelf, to be frank!Click
This was a really pleasant surprise for me, as a Sandler fan. I went to see this with a big group of friends and they really detested the hell out of it. They loved the trailers and thought they were getting one thing, not really taking to the fact that they felt they were handed something completely different. I, on the other hand, was not prepared to be burnt twice after the Anger Management fiasco so, after seeing and liking the trailers, I decided to lower my expectations completely and just settle in for a dumb couple of hours with no high hopes or anything. I know there are a lot of Sandler fans who really crap on this, and it’s all down to the direction it takes towards the end of the second act. For those not in the know, and for those who don’t like spoilers you should look away now, the film starts to play like a modern day spin on Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life in the third act whereby we begin to see the effects on Sandler’s character, workaholic Michael Newman, and his overuse of a “universal remote control” that allows him to treat his life like a DVD. His children grow old and estranged from him, his wife leaves him for the very person he suspected she would, making a great life for herself and he ends up dying away in some futuristic medical facility (before doubling back for the all important happy ending). I dug the film a great deal as a slice of escapist comedic nonsense. I didn’t like the design and look of the third act but I liked the direction it takes. Anyway, any film that has Christopher Walken in it, has Adam Sandler farting in David Hasselhoff’s face and has the can’t-act-but-looks-stunning Kate Beckinsale as the female lead is alright in my book!Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights
I own this (I bought it for 50p, second-hand, from my local newsagents out of a sense of completion) and I really don’t think I get its existence. However, judging from the reviews it received, I don’t think I was the only one. It’s a vanity piece like nothing I’ve seen before. Not in a diabolical way like John Travolta and his Battlefield Earth, just in a truly bizarre sort of way instead. Let me explain; Sandler and his regular buddies, including screen-regular Allen Covert, have gotten together and scripted a musical about the Jewish festive season of Hanukah – only done in animation… and with gross-out toilet humour that doesn’t really work… and Sandler doing most of the lead voice work himself (including an old man or his twin sister), whilst roping in the likes of Jon ‘I’ll-do-anything’ Lovitz and comedy-car-crashes like Rob Schneider in for support. It’s an interesting endeavour, in so much as Sandler clearly wanted to try and get something out there for Jewish kids as they suffer under the weight of all those Christmas movies/cartoons etc. for Catholics, and there are actually a few catchy little tunes caught up amongst it all but it’s still, when you cut through all the gritted-teeth attempts at positivity, a poorly judged and mishandled flick (some of the humour is just downright cruel!) that doesn’t know who it’s aimed at or who it’s working towards.50 First Dates
Reuniting Sandler with his Wedding Singer co-star, Drew Barrymore (who I’m not that big a fan of!), to lesser effect, here he plays an island lothario in Hawaii who enjoys countless no strings attached short-term flings with any number of visiting tourists – until he meets the girl of his dreams (Barrymore). When it turns out that said girl has a short-term memory disorder that causes her to forget Sandler’s Henry Roth everytime she goes to sleep, he goes to extraordinary lengths to get her to fall in love with him as new over and over again each day. I find this film to be actually pretty funny (hell – even Rob Schneider makes me chuckle occasionally in this!) and surprisingly sweet. I’ve used this as a ‘date DVD’ on several girlfriends/prospective girlfriends over the last three years and it works a treat. It’s got enough ‘standard’ Sandler in it to keep a guy happy and there’s enough chick-flick convention to moisten the lady’s eyes (not to mention her knickers if you dap a fake tear from your eye as the movie draws to a close – play it right though, you don’t want her thinking you’re a total soft shite! Make sure once she’s spotted your ‘pretend’ crying, you clear your throat manfully then say “This dick isn’t going to suck itself!” then thrust her head towards your crotch! NB: Please for the love of God, take this in good humour and don’t actually follow this advice. Gazz and Filmrot.com are in no way responsible for any resulting criminal charges!). It’s another example of the fact that when Sandler manages to find that perfect balance between his expected-schtick and the sugary-sweet stuff, he ends up with a film that will probably turn out pretty timeless and re-watchable (see also Big Daddy and The Wedding Singer) for future audiences without necessarily earning any “classic” status.Happy Gilmore
The definitive Adam Sandler flick – an early one that hasn’t really been bettered in terms of consistent laughs and levels of self-assurance! It could be seen as the “template-setter” that Sandler tried to ride for a few years before he started taking more Happy Gilmore style guaranteed laughs out and putting more Wedding Singer style ‘heart’ in to his films. You’ve got your misunderstood protagonist who has an ever so small short-fuse when it comes to anger management. He meets a smoking hot girl who kind of doesn’t see him for who he really is and keeps him at an arms distance until he starts to woo her and then she falls head over heels in love with him. There’s an obnoxious prick who wants to stand in the way of whatever it is Sandler’s character wants to achieve. There’s the uplifting finale, a few famous comedians showing up here and there (Rob Schneider doesn’t count!) and it’s all set to a cracking soft rock soundtrack of forgotten 70s and 80s musical gems! For reference, see also Billy Madison, Big Daddy, 50 First Dates, Mr Deeds, The Waterboy and The Wedding Singer. This film though is completely unpretentious yet wonderfully played. It is fast moving away from its cult-movie status into being recognised as the mainstream comedy delight that it actually is. It’s hugely quotable (“I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast!” “You eat pieces of shit for breakfast? That’s disgusting!”) and a really great comedy that shows that Lorne Michaels doesn’t know EVERYTHING about comedy – he refused to allow his outside-SNL movie production company to support the early Sandler ventures as he “didn’t get them”. How can you not “get” Happy Gilmore?!?Little Nicky
Often held up as the bastard-stepchild on the Adam Sandler filmography; the one that broke his ‘golden run’, The Cable Guy to his Jim Carrey, if you will. The film came about because of the huge successes, box office-wise, that Sander had been having with The Wedding Singer and The Waterboy back to back. Studios recognised that he could turn out these $20-30 million movies and bring in returns of $100 million and beyond so they handed him the infamous ‘blank canvass’ (Mike Myers was allegedly once given this same ‘blank canvas’ after the success of Wayne’s World to which he stated to a studio head ‘Well, what I’ve always wanted to do was work with Fellini!’ before coming to understand that Fellini was dead and settled for Wayne’s World 2!). Sandler returned with one-line of dialogue – “I play the son of the devil!” – and New Line handed him his largest ever budget and creative control to pick his own director/cast etc. without ever seeing a single page of a screenplay. What a cast Sandler and his buddies managed to drag into this movie huh? They’ve got Harvey Kietel playing the Devil himself and the late great Rodney Dangerfield as the Devil’s dad. They’ve got the [then] smoking-hot-off-the-back-of-Notting-Hill Rhys Ifans, Tom Tiny Lister, Reese Witherspoon, Quentin Tarantino, Jon Lovitz, Dana Carvey, Ozzy Osbourne, Michael McKean, Patricia Arquette and, paying tribute to the fact that all of Sandler’s films exist in the same “universe”, Carl Weathers reprising his role from Happy Gilmore. What, pray tell, of the film itself though? Well, it’s an incredibly inventive film and it should be commended for trying to be original and very nearly getting there. There are actually some really great gags in here but the film’s problem lays not in script or direction form, it’s all down to Sandler unfortunately. He plays the character completely wrong. The way he played Dave Buznik in Anger Management was the exact way to go with this film. Instead he plays the character with this annoying voice, stupid haircut and twisted face as if he’s forcing his “character” towards us as opposed to letting us discover him. The film isn’t the disaster that it’s been made out to be. Sandler is bad in it but the supporting players are having such a ball that it proves infectious. As a result the film is starting to get reappraised already by audiences and it’s starting to develop a little bit of a cult following. For Sandler fans, it used to be the dead-weight around their favourite comedian’s neck – until he made Mr Deeds and Anger Management almost back to back. Now, Little Nicky looks like Dumb & Dumber in comparison!The Longest Yard (2005)
Why not read my original review, just by clicking right here!Mr Deeds
As previously discussed when looking at Happy Gilmore, Sandler likes to think of himself as having a ‘fail-safe’ career template in the same vein as Jim Carrey has his “rubber-faced” schtick to pull out the cupboard whenever he goes into some $100 million high concept comedy gig to make up for whatever personal endeavour has failed him previously. Coming off of the critical and commercial disaster (it didn’t actually ‘flop’, it just ‘under-performed’) that was Little Nicky, Sandler decided to play it safe and take his “formula” and apply it to a remake of Mr Deeds Goes To Town. This time out, you’ve got your misunderstood protagonist who has an ever so small short-fuse when it comes to anger management – hereby represented by Sandler’s Longfellow Deeds, a small-town greetings card poet who heads to the “big city” to pick up a $40 billion inheritance. He meets a smoking hot girl who kind of doesn’t see him for who he really is and keeps him at an arms distance until he starts to woo her and then she falls head over heels in love with him – played by Hollywood’s favourite kleptomaniac (and really pushing on the usual standard of “smoking hot” co-stars Sandler has), Winona Ryder, as an undercover news reporter out to try and expose Deeds as being, well, “not nice”. There’s an obnoxious prick who wants to stand in the way of whatever it is Sandler’s character wants to achieve – here we have Peter Gallagher as a member of the board of trustees who wants the money for himself. There’s the uplifting finale (Deeds makes a “grand” speech in front of the board of directors and reveals the “true” heir to the fortune), a few famous comedians showing up here and there (take out the word “comedians” and replace it with “faces” because the best you’ve got here is John McEnroe!) and it’s all set to a cracking soft rock soundtrack of forgotten 70s and 80s musical gems – hereby duly represented by Pete Townsend’s fantastic musical masterpiece ‘Let My Love Open The Door’ being played over the closing-credits! The thing is, we’ve seen Sandler do this template so many times before and done so, so, so much better that this turns out to be… well… boring. And that has got to be a first for an Adam Sandler flick right? Little Nicky was annoying here and there but at least it threw a few decent gags your way. Hell, even Bulletproof entertained you by being so bad that it was actually good. This? This just felt like ‘the same old same old’ and, wonderful work by John Turturro aside, blighted by some truly dreadful casting – Yes, Ryder, I’m talking to you! Now put down Wyverex’s jumper and leave! Friggin’ sticky fingers! [PS, are we still doing post-2001 Winona Ryder shoplifting gags? Or… you know… is it still ‘too soon’?]Punch Drunk Love
Premiere magazine had it spot on when they referred to this film as “a movie of undeniable power” and as “a modestly scaled masterpiece”. This is a feature written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, going against the criticism that he can only work in unrestricted epic formats (both modern masterpieces of his, Boogie Nights and Magnolia, pushed towards or over the three hour running time) by delivering a lean 95 minute movie, specifically for Adam Sandler because the writer/director truly felt the star had untapped range. It’s a huge departure for Sandler in so much as Anderson is forcing him to dial back on everything and play nothing for outright laughs so that the character feels real as opposed to more of just an outright caricature. Sandler plays Barry Egan, a socially impaired owner of a small novelty business, who is dominated by his seven sisters, obsessed with winning free air-miles from a tinned pudding competition and unlikely to find love. When a mysterious woman (Emily Watson) walks into his life and the people behind a phone-sex-line start trying to blackmail him (led by Philip Seymour Hoffman), Barry finds his emotions going haywire – fluctuating between uncontrollable rage, lust and self-doubt. This is a dark, lovely and unique film experience. It’s one of the best films I have seen in the last ten to fifteen years. Anderson appears to just continually prove that you can improve upon a masterpiece with every film he releases – Magnolia was a more accomplished slice of screen perfection then the flawless and fantastic Boogie Nights. Punch Drunk Love proves that you can achieve the qualities of both of those films in half the running time whilst getting a revelatory performance out of Adam Sandler. The guy should have been nominated for an Oscar for his performance. Anderson should have won for his writing and direction. There is no justice in the world. This is a fantastic film!Saturday Night Live: The Best of Adam Sandler
Anyone who has read the truly brilliant book ‘Live From New York’ about the [then] 25 year history of Saturday Night Live will know that Sandler never really got the respect he deserved (clearly they learnt nothing from how they handled Eddie Murphy in the 80s?) and his resulting career success is bitter-sweet as a result. They never really knew what to do with him or how to handle his talent and, therefore, Sandler spent the first few years on the show struggling to write for himself or playing secondary characters in sketches for the regular ‘loved’ members of the cast. He plugged away at it, eventually finding support from some staff writers (Tim Herlihy in particular – who went on to write/produce most of Sandler’s big screen output!) and eventually breaking into the show on his own terms. Then, after doing so, NBC executives fired him because they didn’t “get” his style of comedy. This is one of those rushed-out completion DVDs that shows Sandler’s talents in full force and exactly why he was such an under-rated gem on Saturday Night Live. It’s got the ‘best’ of most of his regular sketch characters like Opera Man, Canteen Boy, Cajun Man and the Gap Girl along with a few of his great little musical numbers and the guest-list includes people like Alec Baldwin, David Duchovny, Courtney Cox, Shannon Doherty, Kirstie Alley and Michael Keaton. Whilst it’s obviously not as great a completion-driven showcase as the likes of Eddie Murphy or Will Ferrell’s Saturday Night Live Greatest Hits, it’s still a funny little portfolio way better then the likes of those put out for Chris Rock or David Spade.Spanglish
Further confirmation of Sandler’s choice to be an “all-rounder” as an actor, following his acclaimed turn in Punch Drunk Love, as he takes the alleged ‘lead’ (his character is more of a supporting player – it’s really Paz Vega’s movie!) in writer/director James L. Brooks’ follow-up to his smash-hit, As Good As It Gets. It’s actually quite a surprise choice because the role requires more dramatic range and underscored romance then the typical broad comedy that Sandler is used to playing. Many will argue that he’ll already climbed that mountain with Paul Thomas Anderson in Punch Drunk Love but that was still more of a role he is used to playing except everything was dialled back so that he felt real as opposed to more of a caricature (the role essentially was still as a misunderstood protagonist who has anger management issues) but with a dark comedic edge nevertheless there. Here, the safety net is completely removed and Sandler is out there, exposed, playing it funny but playing it completely straight and real. He’s John Clasky, a devoted dad and a celebrity chef, whose skills have afforded his family a very upscale life, including a summer home in Malibu along with the services of a new housekeeper. Flor (Paz Vega) and her daughter have recently emigrated to LA from Mexico in an attempt to find a better way of life for themselves. Taking on the job of the Clasky housekeeper, Flor finds herself having to fight for her daughter’s soul when she discovers that life in a new country is perilous – especially when surrounded by the wealth and eccentricities of the Clasky family! The film is nice, inoffensive and wonderfully played by all involved, including Sandler and especially Cloris Leachman. Tea Leoni takes a little bit of getting used to but acquits herself by the end. It’s excellently written and beautifully directed but, at two hours and six minutes, it feels criminally overlong and self-indulgent. Each three acts is incredibly bloated and showing clearly obvious signs as to what needs to get removed etc. A nice but hugely overcooked little drama!The Waterboy
After The Wedding Singer was such a surprise success on both sides of the pond – it was actually the first Adam Sandler to get any sort of proper cinema release over here in the UK with most of his films either going straight to video or getting limited (often London only) cinema time – Sandler and his best friend/co-writer Tim Herlihy went ahead with their follow-up; a big, Disney conglomerate-financed sports comedy about an oddball mama’s boy with an obsession with water, who grew up on a farm in Cajun territory, and goes to work as the water-boy for the local football team until it’s revealed that his unrepressed anger makes him perfect to work the defence line for the team. Sandler’s character work here is either something you’ll tolerate or something that’ll turn you off as he puts on a “funny” face and voice (something that would later prove to be his downfall in Little Nicky when he overdid it) alongside a great cast that includes Henry Winkler (who would go on to become something of a Sandler regular with a cameo in Little Nicky and a great little role in Click), Jerry Reed, Fairuza Balk and the fantastic Kathy Bates who has an absolute blast here. The thing is though it’s just a really funny little film. It’s like Sandler is following that all important template here conceived with Happy Gilmore as a response to the overly romantic feel of his previous smash-hit, The Wedding Singer (misunderstood protagonist with a short-fuse, smoking hot girl who eventually falls head over heels in love with him, obnoxious prick standing in the way of Sandler’s characters goals, uplifting finale, a few comedians here and there and a cracking soft rock soundtrack of forgotten 70s and 80s musical gems). It’s another Adam Sandler film that was easily dismissed upon release by critics, still making a boat-load of money though, but is now starting to be reappraised as a funny, sweet and rather enjoyable film. Considering its goal is to make you laugh and entertain you, for me, it achieves it one hundred percent.The Wedding Singer
Some people like to refer to this as the “definitive” Adam Sandler film. They’re wrong. They’re the same sort of people that start liking a football team just because they’re winning but could never stand them when they were at the bottom of the league. Everyone who’s any sort of Sandler fan knows that as great as this film is, and it is, it only served to show Sandler that his films needed an access point for the female cinemagoers. The real “definitive” Sandler movie is, of course, Happy Gilmore. This is a great little romantic comedy that takes the standard conventions of the romantic comedy genre and just has fun with them, giving the film a refreshed and inviting feel. However, all compliments aside, I want to use up the rest of the review for this film to discuss Drew Barrymore, if that’s okay with you Dear Reader? This woman is heading towards her forties. She spent her childhood and teenagers years as an alcoholic and a junkie. What, on God’s green earth, makes her think that it is at all respectable for her to behave in this “little girly”, so sugary “I’m so cute and wonderful” forced manner? She’s a grown woman for God’s sake. It’s like when you’re dating a woman and you’re playing around with each other and she wants something from you so she wrinkles her nose and puts on the allegedly cute little girl voice and thinks that she’s being adorable. You just want to grab her and shake her by the shoulders and scream “What on earth makes you think that acting like a child is a turn-on to me? If that turned me on then I’d just bypass you, fuck a child and take the inevitable jail-sentence on the chin, wouldn’t I? You sick, sick, sick bitch!” Barrymore’s adult (reformed) career is based solely around this child-in-a-woman’s body way of performing. Admittedly she has good chemistry with Sandler here in so much as they look like they’re having fun together but she has no dramatic range at all. She emotes like she is a twelve year old auditioning for the local high school’s drama club with a page torn out of a Tennessee Williams play but with no understanding of the words at all. Drew Barrymore annoys me more then picking off my genital crabs whilst I’m relaxing with a beer in front of a movie, only to accidentally find out that one of the crabs has fell into said beer and is taking awhile to drown. Sandler proved himself to have wonderful chemistry with Kate Beckinsale in Click and with Joey Lauren Adams in Big Daddy. Hopefully he’ll leave the stupid baby-woman alone from now on! All I can say to get this review back on track is thank god for some fantastic comedic turns from Christine Taylor, Allen Covert, Jon Lovitz and Steve Buscemi in the film’s scene-stealing moment – not to forget Billy Idol of course!
And that’s all folks! See you next week!
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