The Essentials: The Films Of Adam Sandler

“Funny People” (2009)
Looking back at this team-up with friend and collaborator Judd Apatow (in full-on James L. Brooks wannabe mode with this one), a lot of should’ves and could’ves tend to come to mind. It could’ve been the pinnacle of a career built on financially successful yet mediocre in quality work that’s buried Sandler into a creative stasis. It should’ve been the movie about stand-up comedy, instead that’s only half the story. The first half of “Funny People” is so good that it makes the second half, when it pretty much ditches the behind the scenes look at stand up comedians for a domestic showdown between Eric Bana and Sandler’s George Simmons (playing a thinly veiled version of himself, complete with awful-looking comedies that aren’t that far off from reality) for the heart of Leslie Mann. Apatow deserves credit for taking Sandler out of his comfort zone, and he was rewarded with one of the “SNL” vet’s strongest performances to date. The problem with the film, in the end, is that Apatow tried and failed to play the genre mashup game. Tone is key when grafting together two disparate stories, and Apatow manages to mostly sustain the right pitch through the eventually grueling 153-minute runtime, but the thing he didn’t seem to take into account is that, once your movie switches gears, the next story has to either be better than what came before, or at least as compelling. For those who loved all the great stuff about the celebrity-laden, depressing world of stand-up comedy, the story shift near the midway mark is where the train falls off the rails. We applaud Apatow’s ambition, but if he’d split off these two ideas into separate movies, the truth would emerge: the movie about comedy is great on its own (it could’ve been a masterpiece) and the domestic, one-that-got-away lamentation couldn’t sustain an entire feature. It should’ve been so much better! [C+]

“Bulletproof” (1996)
The premise seemed surefire enough: Sandler would channel his filthier side (evident in his comedy albums, one of which prominently featured a talking goat who is viciously abused by his owner), partnering up with a genuine comedy legend (Damon Wayans) while nestled comfortably inside a buddy comedy template perfected by movies like “48 Hrs” and “Midnight Run.” While it doesn’t quite measure up to what it could have been, thanks largely to a slack script that should have given the actors more to do in half the time (every supposed “twist” is telegraphed from about a mile away), it’s still an experiment that largely works, to the point that you wonder why Sandler has never returned to similar action-comedy territory. The minor success of “Bulletproof” mostly has to do with the lively direction of Ernest Dickerson, who would go on to direct some of the most memorable episodes of AMC‘s creatively unmoored “The Walking Dead,” and the chemistry between Sandler (who plays a car thief connected to a deadly drug kingpin) and Wayans (who plays the undercover cop who busts Sandler and ends up being stuck with him). James Caan phones in his role as the villainous drug dealer, but still manages to have fun with what little he’s given. Darker and stranger than most of Sandler’s widely known fair, it’s not the kind of movie that’s primed for critical reappraisal, but if it was, most would discover it to be a better-than-average action movie that was overshadowed at the time due to the superiority of other movies in the marketplace. As a rental, it’s worth it, if only to hear how Sandler identifies the porno he’s watching as being from the seventies: “The guy’s dick’s got sideburns.” Sandler chuckles to himself and we chuckle along with him. If only he had done more movies like this. [B]

– Drew Taylor, Gabe Toro, Rodrigo Perez, Erik McClanahan, Diana Drumm