‘This bad boy is gonna light up the dessert table…’
I was a big Sandler fan growing up. Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison and Big Daddy were all staples of my childhood. As a kid, you’re unaware of the concept of critical acclaim. The only critics I knew were fellow children, and we all loved Sandler. My awareness of Sandler’s poor cinematic reputation coincided with some of his most derided work. I really enjoyed Click when that came out, and even Grown Ups was pretty hard to resist, given as it was basically Sandler and his mates having fun on holiday.
As a general rule of thumb, once a comedy actor starts dressing up like a woman or wearing a fat suit (or both), it’s time to leave them behind. The release of the excretable Jack and Jill was the moment when I thought I had left Sandler comedies behind forever. The combination of a good write up in the A.V Club and having lots of time on my hands culmintated with a return to the Sandler ouevre. I wish I hadn’t bothered…
Kenny Lustig (Sandler) and Kirby Cordice (Chris Rock) are opposing fathers thrust together by an unlikely wedding. Hilarity never once ensues as Lustig insists on muddling his way through paying for the wedding despite the wealth of resources available to the father of the groom.
In a way, it’s quietly comforting to know that as the world burns, Adam Sandler comedies will remain the same forever. Goofy voices, gross out humour, slapstick contortions – it’s all present and correct. Rock caresses an amputees stumps at one point believing them to the breasts of a woman. Later, Sandler and Steve Buscemi hatch a plan to catch a load of bats and release them in the mayor’s office. The whole thing is a load of old nonsense.
There is the occasional laugh, but at two hours the whole thing feels more like a terrible terrible tragedy. A cinematic shrug. The death throes of a twitching clown, discarded by the side of the road after fatally tripping over his own comically oversized shoes. The death knoll of mirth. You get the point.
Make no mistake, dear reader. This is a bad movie.