Miss Media Junkie v. Adam Sandler

I do not bear any particular ill will towards Adam Sandler, but I refuse to watch Adam Sandler movies. I don't mean every single film that Sandler appears in, or even stars in, but rather anything he had a real creative hand in as writer or producer, which really puts the Adam Sandler in an Adam Sandler movie. He's not a bad actor at all, and I've liked him in other people's films. "Punch-Drunk Love" is my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson movie. He was fine in the misguided "Spanglish" and more than fine in "Reign Over Me." But when you're talking about Adam Sandler, you're generally talking about his comedies, like "Happy Gilmore," "Big Daddy," and the one that's opening today across the country, "That's My Boy." I think they're almost all terrible.

I don't dispute that Adam Sandler can be funny. I liked his run on "Saturday Night Live" when I was a teenager, but his manchild antics on the big screen can be unbearably dull. At first I was willing to give his film work the benefit of the doubt. When you're in high school, you inevitably watch whatever is popular at the moment. So I saw "The Wedding Singer," which was a nice, sweet little romantic comedy he did with Drew Barrymore back in 1998. It was his first real mainstream film, after "Happy Gilmore" and "Billy Madison," and he played a relatively normal, un-Sandler-like romantic lead. I enjoyed it, and I figured all the negative things I'd been hearing about the guy were probably overblown. Then I saw "The Waterboy," and thought it was boring. And I saw "Little Nicky," and thought it was worse. And I saw "Eight Crazy Nights," and while I was glad the "Iron Giant" animators were getting work, I thought the movie was pretty vile.

And then came "Click" in 2006. I'd long since realized that Sandler was always playing variations on the same mean-spirited fratboy doofus in all his comedies, so I'd been quietly keeping my distance from them. "Click," however, was billed as a family film, as something for a broader audience. I figured it was safe to give it a try, a decision I would quickly regret. Sandler played the same unlikeable jerk that he always did, but this time as the patriarch of a picture perfect family that he has to learn to appreciate. Seeing Sandler's brand of ribald, juvenile humor shoehorned into a pretty standard feel-good fantasy redemption story was an agonizing experience. I'm still stunned that so many people thought that "Click" was one of the best Sandler comedies, and that they were genuinely touched by the saccharine, manipulative ending. It actually won the Best Comedy category at the People's Choice Awards that year.

But I couldn't stay mad at him, not after "Reign Over Me," where Sandler plays a heartbroken widower, devastated by the deaths of his loved ones after 9/11. It was a perfect antithesis and antidote to "Click," and it rekindled my hopes a bit. However, lately Sandler's mostly stuck to making Adam Sandler movies, with the exception of Judd Apatow's "Funny People, " In the las few years, we've seen Sandler star in and produce a string of ever more critically reviled comedies like "Grown Ups," "Just Go With It," and "Jack & Jill." I understand that a lot of people enjoy these movies, and Sandler makes them cheap enough that he'll be able to keep churning them out for years and years to come, but I just don't get the appeal. I've given his comedies plenty of chances and I still think there's a really talented comedian somewhere underneath all the brain-dead dickishness of his favorite screen persona, but I feel no guilt whatsoever about avoiding the typical Adam Sandler comedies.

This is not the only movie star I feel this way about. To add a little perspective, I find Adam Sandler to be a fair modern equivalent of Jerry Lewis, another beloved movie comic of the 50s and 60s, who I like best when he's not acting like the cartoonish spaz he's most famous for being onscreen. Lewis, like Sandler, divides people. Many find him supremely gifted and entertaining, most famously the Cahiers du Cinema gang. Others find him annoying and wish he would go away. I'm usually in the latter camp, but there have been a couple of big exceptions. So I've resolved to deal with Sandler the same way I deal with Lewis, which is to be selective. Every once in a while Sandler does make interesting movies, and if I ignore his more commercial, more popular stuff, I find I do like him very much, enough to call myself an Adam Sandler fan even.

A non-Adam Sandler movie Adam Sandler fan. A NASMASF, if you will. There must be more of us out there. Maybe we could start a club.
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