“Funny People” (2009, Judd Apatow)
After the success of “The 40-Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up,” veteran comedy writer/director Judd Apatow was in the coveted position of being able to do whatever he wanted next. At the time, it made sense that he would want to cash in that blank check with something more personal and in 2009, he did just that thing with“Funny People.” On paper, it sounded like another hit with crossover potential for awards recognition. Veteran comedy superstar Sandler teaming up with new-school stars like Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill to make a dramedy in the vein of vintage James L. Brooks. But add in the fact that Sandler’s George Simmons – a clear stand-in for the real-life Sandler – is a morose, jaded comedian who gets diagnosed with cancer, and spends the last 45 minutes of the film with Apatow’s real-life family at their beautiful home in Marin County, and you see why “Funny People” ended up being the box office disappointment it was. So yes, Apatow’s self-reflective ode to the world he loves was undeniably baggy and flawed, but it had glimmers of what could have been the best film of his career, and most importantly, it provided Sandler with his best dramatic role since “Punch-Drunk Love.” If Paul Thomas Anderson gave us the first real dissection of the on-screen Sandler persona, then Apatow gave us the most raw dissection of the man himself. There’s no way to not associate this role with the real-life Sandler cashing in on lazy studio projects and the scarily similar studio comedies Simmons mounts his success on. The film offers Sandler a chance to reckon with his own career trajectory, as well as the potentially alienating, flawed aspects of his own personality. “Funny People” is most successful when it allows Simmons to be unlikeable, and Sandler is always up for the challenge. He embraces every aspect of the challenging role, offering one of his most vulnerable and unapologetic performances yet. – MR
“Men, Women & Children” (2014, Jason Reitman)
Let’s get this out of the way immediately: Jason Reitman’s “Men, Women & Children” is not a good movie. It’s essentially “Reefer Madness” for the era of online over-saturation: an unexpectedly shrill alarmist dud from the otherwise perceptive filmmaker who gave us humanist jewels like “Thank You For Smoking” and “Young Adult.” And yet, if “Men, Women & Children” can be said to possess one overriding redeeming factor, it’s Adam Sandler’s quiet, observant, and ultimately devastating supporting performance as Don Truby: a despondent sad sack trapped in a frigid, loveless marriage with his equally unsatisfied wife Helen (Rosemarie Dewitt, bless her heart). At a certain point, it can seem like literally every character in “Men, Women & Children” is addicted to online pornography, but Sandler is the only member of the cast who manages to authentically sell his character’s ethically compromised relationship to tech. It’s not nubile flesh and cheap, lurid thrills that this perpetually depressed middle-aged dad is after: like Barry Egan in “Punch-Drunk Love,” Don is simply looking for some kind of human connection, however, he can get it. He’s just more prone to moping and less prone to punching out sliding glass doors. This leads to a mind-boggling plot development where both the Trubys begin to use Ashley Madison as a means for engaging in extramarital affairs, although Sandler is so good in the scene where he tracks his wife to a bar where she’s meeting her new suitor that he almost makes you forget how contrived the scene’s basic setup is. If nothing else, “Men, Women & Children” proves that not all “serious” Adam Sandler movies are created equal – and that, in spite of how low Reitman’s film goes (and it does go low), Sandler never allows himself to sink into the muck. – NL
“The Meyerowitz Stories: New and Selected” (2017, Noah Baumbach)
Watching Adam Sandler absolutely lose his shit over his inability to find a decent parking spot on a residential street in New York City has got to be one of the more relatable moments in Noah Baumbach’s oeuvre. Quick show of hands: who’s been there? What’s so brilliant and heartbreaking about Sandler’s turn in “The Meyerowitz Stories: New and Selected” is how it embraces the more recognizable characteristics of Sandler’s comic iconography (his frightening, furious outbursts, his hangdog line readings, his talent for goofy sing-a-longs) along with the more soulful side of the actor that we only occasionally get a full glimpse of. Sandler plays Danny Meyerowitz: the depressed, recently-divorced oldest child of the dysfunctional Meyerowitz clan. Sandler is the least accomplished of the Meyerowitz siblings, the others being his glum sister Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) and the aggressively type-A Matthew (a tightly-wound Ben Stiller), with whom he has a complicated relationship. Like all of Baumbach’s films, “The Meyerowitz Stories” is marvelously acted all around, but it’s arguably Sandler who all but walks away with the movie. Watching him fret over the prospect of sending his aspiring filmmaker daughter to college, or a scene late in the film where he must come to terms with the prospect of his thoroughly difficult father’s lingering mortality, is enough to bring a tear to your eye (the set-piece in which Sandler and Stiller break into a cringingly awkward middle school-level fight on the lawn of a college campus is the rare moment that will unite fans of both “The Squid and the Whale” and “Happy Gilmore”). Ultimately, Sandler acclimates himself so deftly to Baumbach’s preferred ecosystem of neurotic New York Jews that we can only hope that the two work again at some point in the future. – NL
“Uncut Gems” (2019, Josh & Benny Safdie)
In films like “Punch-Drunk Love” and “The Meyerowitz Stories: New and Selected,” directors Paul Thomas Anderson and Noah Baumbach managed to harness the power of Adam Sandler’s oft-remarked-upon sense of sadness. These films weren’t reinventions of the Sandler persona – just nuanced and sympathetic interrogations of it. Sandler isn’t leaning on the weight of any of his past performances in “Uncut Gems”: this performance is much of a reinvention as anything we’ve seen from any actor, ever. Of course, it helps that Howard Ratner – a loose cannon Diamond District jeweler beset by heedless aspirations and a series of escalating debts, a schmuck with a knack for self-preservation who is hopelessly addicted to sewing the seeds of his own destruction – is being played by an actor who knows how to make fine use of a volcanic temperament. With “Good Time,” Josh and Benny Safdie staked their claim as directors who take recognizable marquee movie stars and plunge them headfirst into their ruthlessly frenetic and thoroughly streetwise world. The brothers make use of Sandler’s gifts in a similar fashion to what they accomplished with “Good Time” star Robert Pattinson: in both cases, the brothers successfully weaponize familiar elements of their respective lead’s public identities. Sandler’s Howard Ratner is, among other things, greedy, maniacally focused, romantically unfaithful, and prone to both spectacularly ill-conceived schemes and also embarrassing exhibitions of childish rage. Howard is also a man with a dream, and Sandler’s ability to ground even this unremitting caper’s most unhinged plot developments (just wait until you see how he ends up bound and butt-naked in the trunk of a Mercedes) in something emotionally real is astonishing. There is also something poignant about the act of casting one of the world’s most recognizable Jewish movie stars in a film that manages to brilliantly catechize many of the inherent paradoxes and cultural particulars of modern Judaism through the prism of the crime genre. Sandman: this is how you win. – NL
Honorable Mention
To this day, the purest and most uncut (if you’ll forgive us the Safdie-related pun) distillation of Sandler’s comedic ethos can be found in his first two comedy LPS. “They’re All Gonna Laugh At You” and “What The Hell Happened To Me?” summon the nostalgic, aggressively R-rated aura of juvenile middle-school hilarity, hearkening back to a time when you and your friends would stay up all night binging comedy albums and try to brainstorm the funniest and filthiest jokes. To those who value civility and good taste in their comedy, look elsewhere. To those who want to hear Sandler impersonate hateful New England toll booth attendants, foul-mouthed goats, shrill Jewish mothers, someone named “Fatty McGee,” and an early version of “The Waterboy’s” Bobby Boucher, these albums are a veritable treasure trove.
As far as the rest of Sandler’s cinematic body of work is concerned: “Airheads” is a solid ’90s crudball comedy, and Sandler gives the film’s most appealing performance as the pea-brained drummer of a Sunset Strip metal band who is an inexplicable babe magnet. The Sandman also does his “Midnight Run” thing in the Ernest Dickerson-directed buddy comedy “Bulletproof,” where he makes a fine, fast-talking foil for his more cool-headed co-star Damon Wayans.
Sandler reunited with Drew Barrymore for the adorable rom-com “50 First Dates,” which is one of the better mid-period Happy Madison vehicles in spite of the questionable nature of its plot and a few pointlessly tasteless gags. While it’s very hard to defend the slapdash laffer “Little Nicky” as an empirically good movie, Sandler’s bizarre, mush-mouthed performance as the slacker son of Satan is… well, it’s nothing if not committed.
Sandler mined the darker, more dramatic side of his screen persona once more in the Mike Binder-directed male-bonding weepie “Reign Over Me,” giving a performance that, to this day, divides fans of both Happy Madison and his arthouse work.
The Sandler-starring “The Cobbler” is unquestionably the worst movie Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight,” “Win-Win”) has ever directed: an appalling, rancid fantasy that traffics in more racism, stereotypes, and narrative tropes than “That’s My Boy.” That said, Sandler is fairly good in the film – he’s doing the best he can given the material he’s working with. Sandler also pops up in a memorable cameo in his pal Chris Rock’s “Top Five,” where he evinces more zeal and genuine screen presence in less than five minutes than he does throughout the entirety of “Bedtime Stories” or “The Ridiculous 6.”
“Uncut Gems” is in select theaters now. Trust us, you won’t want to miss it. – Nicholas Laskin