Every Adam Sandler movie, ranked by which is best at being an Adam Sandler movie
You don’t mess with the Sandman. Illustration: Jaya Nicely How do you reckon with a career as polarizing as Adam Sandler’s? If you account for inflation, the 53-year-old zhlubbyman comic actor has starred in 18 movies that have each grossed more than $100 million worldwide, beginning in 1995 with Billy Madison. That’s more than Ben Stiller; more than Jim Carrey; more than Will Smith; more than Tom Cruise.
As a result, when considering his oeuvre, I tried to judge his works by how successfully they achieved what he has been trying to do his whole career. That means artistically superior movies, like a Meyerowitz Stories, will be ranked lower than movies like The Waterboy, which better articulates Sandler’s artistic point of view; on the other hand, you’ll find Meyerowitz still higher than Sandler comedies like Little Nicky, since Meyerowitz represents a culmination of his acting life.
Not only is the film amateurish — the crew forgot to bring the box of lenses, so the cinematographer was forced to shoot with the wrong equipment — Sandler’s performance is hardly a diamond in the rough. It’s just rough. His sweetness and sensitivity are nowhere to be found in his goofy, charmless performance. Regardless of quality, it was clearly a fun time, what with it being an active cruise ship filled with Miss Universe contestants an all.
Sandler’s movies depend on you caring about his character because they’re played by your pal Adam Sandler. They depend on goodwill, but by 2015, at the age of 48, it’s hard to root for him as another zhlub with arrested development. Where once you sympathized with his characters, now their belief in that they deserve better feels almost like entitlement, as is it does in Pixels.
36. Just Go With It His most frustrating, least lovable romantic comedy, co-starring Jennifer Aniston. If you don’t like Adam Sandler, Mr. Deeds is a more watchable movie than many of the films ranked above it. That’s because there is so little Adam Sandler in it. Yeah, he is the star of the thing, appearing in most of the scenes, but he isn’t tasked with carrying much of the comedic load, and his titular Mr. Deeds doesn’t really have an arc — Winona Ryder’s character is the one that goes on the Sandler-esque journey to adulthood. Mr.
Despite all of this, in a film made up of a many overlapping, terribly done narratives, Adam Sandler and Rosemarie DeWitt’s story about a married couple who each use different parts of the internet to find people to have affairs with is absolutely lovely. I wish director Jason Reitman had just released a short film of their 20 minutes. Specifically, the film includes two of the best dramatic scenes of Sandler career. The first is his first interaction with a sex worker.
The best Adam Sandler movies — hell, even the worst Adam Sandler movies — start with his character being in an undesirable position because of a decisions he made, and as a result of making changes in his life, he ends the movie in a better position. But not Bedtime Stories.
Photo: Columbia Pictures Ready for this? The problem with Grown Ups is that it was too ambitious. Excluding a two-hander here and there, Sandler mostly made solo-protagonist movies up until this point. He would make plenty of room for other people to be funny, but the plot zipped along easily enough.
26. The Do-Over Sandler’s never been dirtier or looser onscreen, but the movie doesn’t live up to the performance. As a whole, Murder Mystery, a celebration of marriage as partnership, fits nicely alongside Blended, in that both represent a more mature depiction of love than is commonplace in broad comedies. It’s because Sandler’s movies, with some obvious exceptions, have seemed less interested in falling in love and more interested in making love work.
So, let’s get into it. I get it in principle. Whatever bad taste is, it’s this. There are cheap laughs, sure, but there are intentional laughs. If you want to get technical, the comedy is in the contrast between Jill finally confronting her brother and the humbling sounds of her shitting. It’s a deeply human joke — as much as we pretend we are these high-minded beings with our jobs and conversations about books, we have a room in our house where we excrete waste like we’re some cattle.
Here, in the entry for Jack & Jill, I’ll try to answer that question directly. My feeling is this question is based on a few incorrect assumptions. First, it assumes there is an objective “good” that critics and Sandler all agree upon, meaning that Sandler thinks his own movies are worse than the prestige movies he’s merely acted in. It also assumes that Sandler would prefer to act in a “good” movie than work on one of his own movies.
Simply, Tartakovsky wanted to make a movie showcasing his impressionistic visual style and Sandler wanted to make one with a bunch of dumb bits aimed at an audience too young to care about what a critic would think is good. In spite of this clash, or maybe because of it, all of these movies are, frankly, great! Whatever power struggle may have happened behind the scenes, the product was not infected with any bad vibes.
Considering this is essentially the only place you can see Adam Sandler’s work on a big screen these days, you could do a lot worse.Let me get the bad out of the way: The ending of this movie doesn’t make sense and is very annoying, and not just because it prominently features Rudy Giuliani a.k.a. Adam Sandler’s most problematic fave. But before you get to that point, you get a great extension of Sandler’s comedic tools, as the film’s premise is an ingenious foil for Sandler’s style.
14. Eight Crazy Nights Animation and singing free Sandler to be grosser and more self-loathing than ever before. Don’t Mess With the Zohan is radical by contrast. Of course a story written by Sandler, Robert Smiegal, and Judd Apatow about a former Israeli soldier turned hairstylist will be Jewish, but what makes it stand out among Sandler’s work is how specifically Jewish it is.
Not to get all Nanette on you, in so much as any comedian has a variety of tools to build and relieve tension, but the Safdies used all of Sandler’s talents only in service of the former. Most important, it is his first drama to intentionally lean into Sandler’s taste for playing annoying people. In the film, Idina Menzel, who plays his wife, literally tells Sandler’s Howard Ratner, a jewelry dealer and gambling addict, “I think you are the most annoying person on the planet.
“‘I would lead with “Loyalty is his motto” ’ . ‘Sandler is a very loyal guy to his friends’ . ‘I have enormous, enormous affection for him’ . ‘Such a menschy, sweet person’ . ‘Really down to earth’ . ‘He’s a great guy’ . ‘I love, love, love him!’ . ‘He really cares about people’ . ‘Very generous with his own praise and support’ . ‘He’s very loyal’ . ‘Incredibly loyal and nice’ . ‘His level of loyalty is unparalleled’ . ‘If he goes somewhere, I’ll go with him, no matter where’ .
With the context of seeing Sandler and Barrymore together again, but now a bit older, the plot of 50 First Dates itself plays with time. Where Before Sunset literally takes place over one day, 50 First Dates essentially does as well, with Barrymore’s character resetting every 24 hours. Sandler has to then convince Barrymore to fall in love with him every day and it is all really cute and charming and they are so lovely together.
And that’s why it’s here on the list. Considering so many people I talked to while working on this assumed Happy Gilmore would be top two, I’m sure after seeing what was No. 1, a lot of you control-F searched “Happy G.” It’s really great, but I think because of childhood nostalgia it stands as maybe his most overrated movie. Yet this is undoubtedly an important movie in Sandler’s growth as a comedian, as he still is clearly figuring things out .
Anyway, the point is they are different. But what is exceptional here is how Sandler and Apatow pull from their real lives to give the performance verisimilitude. Every time George Simmons talks about Seth Rogan’s character’s penis, it feels like you’re getting a clear picture of what it’s like being friends with this guy from someone who is.
The Week Of is the purest essence of the new older Adam Sandler, and the result is the most understated, naturalistic film in the Happy Madison–verse. The whole thing is shot handheld, for God’s sake! And at the center of it is Sandler, a father of the bride trying his best to keep his daughter’s wedding together despite a lack of funds, wit, or charm. Comedically, it’s a nice reminder that Sandler is much funnier when playing low status because it’s just more believable.
What you see is a bit of a breakthrough in terms of his man-child character, resulting in something more psychologically damaged, something more needy. Many Sandler movies follow an arc not like an episode of Queer Eye: A young man is stuck and needs the help of an outside force to understand what it means to be a man.
Billy Madison was the first of these movies and its purest distillation. His exuberance was infectious, and still is all these years later. It’s a goofy performance, with him doing the kinds of silly voices associated with the audio sketches from his albums. You know the lines: “Conditioner is better.” “Stop looking at me, swan.” “Chlorophyll? More like BOREophyll.
Have you watched the OA? I’m serious. Esssssssssssentially, characters travel in between dimensions, landing in the body of whoever they are in that existence; sometimes they have similar backgrounds, sometimes they do not. And when you jump into this new version of you, you are both yourself and the version of you whose body it is. That’s what Adam Sandler does. Each new movie, he is the collections of self he’s acquired along the way, as well as the person he is in the given movie.
You’re getting it all. You’re getting a high concept, escapist premise with a neat hero’s journey arc. You’re getting emotional maturity and some broad-ass comedy . You’re getting Adam Sandler as the centerpiece of comedic scenes, both showing his quick-temper side and his goofy-voice side.
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