Adam Sandler’s comedies are not “dumb fun”; maybe that’s why they’re not in critics’ favor. Sandler’s hilarious new film Jack and Jill (in which he portrays both male and female fraternal twins), brings to mind the great line that Ernst Lubitsch’s classic 1946 female plumber comedy Cluny Brown “upset people who didn’t like to admit they have plumbing.”
Sandler’s real dare is to defend ethnicity—not piously but through comedy that has social and political effect: When Jack’s WASP assistant (Nick Swardson) boasts that he’s almost Jewish because “I’m an atheist,” Jack looks nonplussed. Yet, Sandler isn’t. His comic introspection has a moral core. Appreciation of roots and background is what gives the film’s overlong but uproarious Al Pacino subplot its basis—it’s both crazily romantic and a professional salute. That’s because Sandler knows how our plumbing works.
The real measure of the knee-jerk reaction to his opinions on Jack And Jill, Armond White says, is that he’s now been kicked off of Rotten Tomatoes. White made the claim after Bennington pointed out his presence on the review aggregate site had long been a source of contention for people who feel that White intentionally “spoils” positive ratings for movies.
White is the Troll’s Troll as much as Louis C.K. is the Comedian’s Comedian.
According to the article, he wasn’t kicked off of RT, he just says that he was. He changed publications and now RT has to decide to pick up the new publication that he’s writing for.
The A.V. Club spoke to “the guy” at Rotten Tomatoes, editor-in-chief Matt Atchity, who explained that White’s most recent reviews don’t appear on the website because as of earlier this fall, he no longer writes for New York Press, and they simply haven’t yet had a chance to consider whether his new publication, CITYArts, should be included. “If he’d been kicked off, he wouldn’t still have a profile page,” Atchity points out, noting that White contacted him approximately a month ago to let him know that he’d moved, and explaining that this automatically put him in line with all the other publications vying for inclusion. Because of this incident, however, Atchity now says they’re considering looking into adding White’s newer reviews as early as this week, sighing, “We’re aware of what sort of press he generates.”
I’m . . . strangely intrigued. I love, absolutely and totally, Billy Madison. Not so much everything that came afterward, but Adam Sandler working from inside his own head instead of a marketing department is hilarious to me. I assumed the godawful premise of this movie meant it would set a new low for him, but maybe it’s total Sandler in sheep’s clothing?
The way that whoever was unfortunate enough to be sent to it for Screened put it was that it’s like Adam Sandler’s meta-joke about the consumer base, that he’s making because nobody goes to see him in his serious movies, but people pay hella cash for things that are terrible.
I assume that’s bad.
Also, remember another famous product of a comedian operating entirely to his own exacting, perfect sensibilities (and another SNL alum, no less) - The Love Guru.
Hm. Do you suppose this means that he considers Just Go With It, Grown Ups, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry serious movies, or just that those are more meta-jokes?
I think they’re equally funny, but only Billy Madison was friggin’ surreal. Like when they were doing the baking competion, the bad guy’s mitt catches on fire and Billy’s laughing, then they show him bodily engulfed in flames and Billy is still laughing. It had so many moments that pushed past the edge of expectation, and in a “dumb comedy” movie to boot.
I thought Punch Drunk Love was the worst kind of navel gazing awfulness, however “Reign Over Me” and “Spanglish” were genuinely heartfelt, quality movies I felt could both be qualified as “serious”. I’m curious as to why you don’t thing they, especially “Reign Over Me” are “serious”?
I’ve never seen “Funny People”.
Like Orpheus in the underworld, Jonah suffers knowledge of anguished life and the threat of mortality. And like the hero of Crank, Jonah fights to stay alive. Hayward’s action scenes depict a terrorist environment way past Pixar-kiddieland. Bombs, flames, explosions carry 9/11 force, replete with hellhound and ravens—creatures whose myths help vanquish anxiety—all to a pounding score that re-routes death metal back to cathartic affirmation. A retaliation scene that ends with ash and cinders is stringent enough to obliterate despair—almost as powerfully as De Palma’s The Fury climax
“And like the hero of Crank, Jonah fights to stay alive.”
