“When these fine people came to me with an offer to make four movies for them, I immediately said ‘yes’ for one reason and one reason only… Netflix rhymes with ‘wet chicks,'” Sandler said in a prepared statement. “Let the streaming begin!”
Sounds like Netflix just paid for Sandler to take four vacations.
I bet he put more work in preparing that statement then he will acting in the next 4 movies.
And sadly, it will have been a funnier joke than any in the 4 movies.
Netflix has made penty of TV series. Have they made a movie yet? A comedy? Because I hear it’s all in the …
Sandler really ticks me off because he CAN do better. But after his first few films made money, he just stopped trying and decided to cash in with family friendly fare that is so unfunny it’s painful. I remember an interview with Judd Aptow in which he regaled the interviewer with stories about his early days rooming with Sandler and how hilarious he was. I got the feeling from that interview that Aptow also felt he stopped being funny quite some time ago.
I didn’t mind his last movie, Blended. My wife and I saw it and it was either the fact that we had kids around that age or it was our first ‘date night’ in months, but it was an enjoyable outing. I turn off my brain when I watch his movies. Though, off the top of my head, I can’t really think of any other movies I liked of his other than Happy Gilmore and, maybe, Clicked (or whatever that one was called). Little Nicky was downright obnoxious.
Billy Madison was quite good, I thought. It felt like a dark comedy at times, and a sweet throwback to a John Hughes film at others. Plus, it had Norm McDonald in one of my favorite exchanges:
Billy: Wait a minute. What day is it?
Norm: October?
I don’t have a problem with Adam Sandler, he generally entertains me, and I’ll keep an eye on and watch his films (I already subscribe to Netflix as everyone in my house uses it, so why not?). I didn’t really dig the animate film he did back at the height of his turn, but I usually get a laugh or three out of his films. Plus, you’ll have to pry my love for Happy Gilmore from my cold, dead, hands. Make a Happy Gilmore 2, I say!
“You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?”
He gets a lifetime pass from me for being wonderful in Punch Drunk Love. Looking at his filmography is pretty cringe-inducing. The number of half-ass, insipid comedies in there is awe-inspiring.
Yeah, Punch Drunk Love was great and his performance in Funny People was quite good. The movie was long and too self-indulgent but it was still leagues ahead of his Grown Ups style output. This Netflix deal is interesting.
P.S. Zohan was a very ambitious and interesting clustercuss of a movie. I didn’t like it but at least they were going for… something.
Agreed, but you gotta love that Eminem / Ray Romano interaction at the bar.
Weirdly, I found Zohan to be the only movie of his I’ll actually watch again intentionally.
I think I just love that they turned the batshit crazy to 11 and don’t ever feel the need to explain any of it. It makes it easy to just enjoy the stupid without distraction.
I have liked Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore and that’s it. A few others have been watchable but the majority of his work for almost the past 20 years has been bad. It blows my mind that he makes so many movies and that people pay to see them.
It’s pure star power and charisma. He’s just such a sweetly lovable smartass. Every part he plays has that layer of sarcastic self-awareness, like we’re all in on the same joke. We all know it’s dumb but Adam makes that okay.
I think this character goes back to his early song performances on Weekend Update. They were so stupidly glorious and the way he would shyly grin and look around during the laughter seemed to suggest that he agreed, like he was somehow getting away with murder up there.
Often he seems to apply that same smartass attitude to his career choices. You can’t argue with the box office results, even if us movie nerds say tsk tsk and expect better of him. :)
I’m not really a fan of the guy but when I was younger I listened to this one over and over and over and over: Adam Sandler - The Hypnotist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqkaMhRVbfc
I feel like Sandler is just trying his hardest to live up to the mold of the aging comedy star’s descent into family-friendly irrelevance (see: Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers).
Sandler is a little weird because I feel like his early work is so emblematic of the 80’s standup comedy explosion, when people sort of just confused manic and weird with funny. So, he’s particularly susceptible to getting irrelevant as he ages because without the energy, there isn’t much left. His early stuff does hold up, because the energy and weirdness are still there, it’s just hard to tap that as you get older. It isn’t really a criticism of Sandler per se, comedy is partially about surprise and novelty, and that’s just the province of young people. (Which makes standouts like Louis C.K. all the more impressive. Bill Murray is the other exception that comes to mind, but he’s always had a deadpan mode that works better as he aged into it).
Sandler does still have a aw-shucks charm, which is mostly what he coasts on now, but I suspect that he’d have to work harder to progress as an actual actor, and he just prefers not to work very hard. I can’t really blame him.
Just watched Blended tonight, I felt it was one of his better attempts out of his last few movies.
After reading the front page today, I just wanted to say to Tom: Ha, ha, you saw an Adam Sandler movie on Netflix.
Yeah, I thought the same thing as I was watching The Do-Over, but kind from an out-of-body experience perspective, similar to how some people experience car accidents.
-Tom
As bad as The Do-Over is, it is a million times funnier than that awful Ricky Gervais movie about the fake war coverage.