For the love of Water Boy, will someone please explain to me why you gave Adam Sandler $42.5 million this weekend?
Granted, I was deservedly harsh to Grown Ups 2, but I am not inherently anti-Sandler.
He was a revelation in Punch-Drunk Love, nuanced and raw in ways he’d never been before (or since), and I’m one of maybe a dozen people on this particular planet who really liked Spanglish.
But even you Sandler fans have to admit that Grown Ups 2, the weekend’s No. 2 film, was hardly his finest hour. It was puerile, lame and flat out lazy – the cinematic equivalent to hurling bodily fluids at the screen. (If you consider the deer peeing in his face in the opening scene, then he pretty literally hurled bodily fluids at the screen.) And this kind of schlock isn’t a one-off, as anyone who regretted spending money on Jack and Jill or That’s My Boy can tell you.
Basically, Sandler is the white Tyler Perry. He continually makes juvenile films filled with ridiculous stereotypes, employing a bunch of actors designed to play on an audience’s nostalgic sympathies – and he’s made a mint doing it. Only Sandler might be worse because he actually has talent.
So tell me, Sandler fans, why do you keep going back? Is it a Happy Gilmore affection for the Sandler of old? Do you really like the stuff he’s producing now? Because I’ll take a Wedding Singer or 50 First Dates over his latest deer [expletive deleted] any day.
