When I was a lot younger, one Actor/Comedian always would have massive hits in the US, but they would never be as popular in the UK, I am of course talking about Adam Sandler. This always used to surprise me.
An actor who I had seen in the background of such films as Coneheads and Airheads, as well as the Steve Martin film, Mixed Nuts uit not taken much notice of him. I never really became aware of his work until I watched his lead role films, Billy Madison & Happy Gilmore and action buddy cop comedy, Bulletproof.
What followed those were 3 films that I still enjoy to this day, A RomCom, The Wedding Singer with Drew Barrymore ; Big Daddy and another sports comedy, The Waterboy, although whereas Gilmore was about golf, this centred on American Football.
I actually would consider The Wedding Singer one of the funniest romantic comedies of all time. Big Daddy was cute and provided laughs as did The Waterboy. This was one of those films you found yourself quoting all the time, in fact for most events, I will still chant You Can Dooooooooo It to this day. Such a good quote that Rob Schneider has repeated it in many of Adam’s other films. Adam also returned the favour as he chanted it in Rob’ film, The Animal.
But after those 3, sadly the wheels seem to come off, Little Nicky; Mr Deeds, a remake of 1936 film Mr Deeds goes to town; Anger Management; another America football film, this time, a remake of the same-titled 1974 film, The Longest Yard; You Don’t Mess With The Zohan; I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and even the dream retaining of Sandler and Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates.
These were fun watches but none really reached the heights of his early career.
The only exception to this spell was when Adam played it not for laughs in Punch Drunk Love, from acclaimed director Paul Thomas Anderson.
But whilst these films were entertaining, it now seems Adam is now almost hated. It is sad, but a run of particularly bad films including Jack and Jill; That’s My Boy; The Cobbler; Grown ups; Grown Ups 2 and the target for most hate, Pixels (we actually thought it was alright, not brilliant, but we had fun watching it)
Our Pixels review can be found here.
Of that list, we think The Cobbler was possibly the worst. We didn’t include Just Go With It on this list. A comedy he made with Jennifer Aniston, as we actually found it a lot of fun at the cinema, but sadly not so much when it came to rewatching it. I guess we were in the right mood to be entertained when we saw it in the cinema which can happen!
Adam, of course, will not need to worry about the hate, a deal with Netflix to make 4 exclusive films, gave him a very lucrative deal. Sadly the first of those films, The Ridiculous 6 was not brilliant either. The latest, The Do Over with David Spade however shows some promise.
A lot of the grief towards Adam’s movies are things like the crudeness, the use of woman etc but his films have also included homosexual characters, as well as dealt with bullying, racial abuse and single parent families, which should be applauded as well.
But it does bring us onto where Adam should perhaps concentrate, we think his films for younger audiences have been charming. Hotel Transylvania 1 and 2 were massive hits for a reason, we also loved Bedtime Stories, although that possibly is more for a great performance from Hammy the Hamster.
It is a real shame as we find Adam to be generally likeable and we have had some great laughs with his movies over the years. We hope that one day he can find the early form he had, which made his films a must see, rather than of late where we normally shrug our shoulders and say we’ll probably wait for the DVD.
What do you think of Adam Sandler? What is your favourite movie of his? Would you prefer he did more family than the cruder comedies? We would love to hear from you here at Barking Mad About Films