Is Adam Sandler Serious With That’s My Boy?
It’s happening again, ladies and gentlemen. What, you ask? Seemingly every year, Adam Sandler makes an awesomely bad movie. These films are usually complete with slapstick humor and largely improbable plots and premises that bring out the awkward 13-year-old in all of us. Sexuality, nonsensical dialogue that comes out of nowhere… it’s all in the repertoire for the Sandman.
He’s back at it this summer with his latest offering, That’s My Boy. In case you haven’t already heard, this film follows a young man who was conceived by his teenage father and a scandalous schoolteacher.
That’s right, we’re starting out by hamming it up about a topic that pervades our culture – to an alarming extent these days – school pedophilia.
Of course, the father, played by Sandler, wasn’t much of a father because he was too young to know how to be. Despite this, the son grows up to be a responsible… stiff of a hedge fund manager, played by Andy Samberg. Singer Ciara and comedian Luenell are also featured in the film.
Dad reaches out to son because he needs money to avoid prison time for tax evasion, and the two try to make up for lost time – just in time for his son’s wedding. It turns out something like this.
As if the premise weren’t bad enough on its own merit, this is largely recycled material for Sandler.
Seriously, what is it with this guy and present yet useless fathers? He actually did this fairly well in the pretty funny Big Daddy. No need to do it again, unless he changes his shtick.
The obviously gross one-liners can only do so much. The real laughs, especially in films, come from subtlety and wit, not from the sophomoric stuff that could’ve been written in a junior high bathroom.
Unfortunately, this pretty much promises to be more of the same, which means two things:
- There will be a few touching moments that seem to point to an underlying message;
- People will go to see this movie in droves, and it will make at least double its budget in profits.
This just about always happens in a Sandler flick, as the man has the formula down and I’m not mad at him. That said, That’s My Boy drops in time for Father’s Day and if you really love your Dad, this might not be the movie.
So the purpose of this blog is to complain that a good movie is coming out……. THAT’S intelligent….
I hope you understand the sarcasm when I said this was intelligent… obviously, anybody who fails to understand an Adam Sandler movie wouldn’t understand much to begin with. A claim that Sandler films often contain sexual humor and flatulence and are without wit. Honestly, that is an exact opposite of the truth….
Though, sex jokes are on occasion used, they are almost always very funny and clever… except in the movie ‘Funny People.’
But on the other hand, and this is what makes me believe that movie critics have never seen an Adam Sandler movie, I cannot think of a single fart joke in a Sandler film, other than a very poorly done one in the movie ‘Grown Ups.’
Adam Sandler makes great films, hell even Jack and Jill wasn’t that bad…. unfortunately, critics can’t seem to enjoy a good comedy, thinking that formulaic films should be automatically disqualified from a good review. Every single movie has a formula… that is Screenwriting 101 (meaning you learn this on your first day of film-school) Some movies may seem like they hide their formulas but trust me, if you’ve ever written a movie before you know its there.
Another thing that critics often complain about is the premise… judging a movie from it’s premise is like judging a book by its cover… oh wait, never mind ITS THE EXACT SAME… Honestly, when does a premise ever mean a movie is worth watching? Is that honestly what some cinema-goers look forward to? Instead of dialogue, characters, plot development, moments of humor, moments of tension, action sequences, heartwarming scenes, and an underlying message… will they really say “hey, this movie is good because it’s about dads!” No… they will say “this movie was good because I laughed the entire way through.” The premise does not make the movie…… here is an example… Star Wars episode one…. GREAT premise… terrible movie…. But the great thing about Adam Sandler is his ability to bring comedy out of almost any premise… take Happy Gilmore for example… he decided to write a movie about golf…. that’s it… that’s the premise… he wanted to play golf in a movie…. does that sound like a good movie summed up? Probably not…. but then why is this remembered as one of the best Adam Sandler movies?
I merely wished to address the points that this blog made (stolen from movie critics who have been saying the same drivel about any good comedy lately) as I am sick of trying to read about an upcoming movie that will be more than likely good, and constantly getting nothing but bad reviews by people who haven’t seen it. I think Adam Sandler deserves a little balance to the repeated internet conversations written by people who wouldn’t know a good film if it bit them on the ass…. (they’d probably complain that “it was too formulaic.”)
@Mike:
I personally never mentioned fart jokes in the film and happen to have seen plenty of Sandler films, which provide me with the context to write the article. You’ve accused me of prejudging the movie when it seems that you very well may have prejudged the article.
Please note that I very clearly gave my criticisms with the formula, and none of those were the mere existence of said formula. In fact, I even said that I wasn’t mad at him for using the formula because it obviously works and remarked that Big Daddy was pretty funny!
In addition to that, I simply said that he tends to rely largely on sophomoric humor instead of the timing, wit, and subtleties which typify well-written comedies.
There is a difference between being funny and being silly. Sandler does silly to a greater extent than he ever attempts to be truly funny. That’s my argument.
Thanks for commenting!
Another person jumping on the “I Hate Adam Sandler” bandwagon. Did you decide to do so after watching that EP of South Park? Or when you read critics do it?
It’s almost annoying at this point.