SANDLER: The definitive thread

[Stefen]

I watched Billy Madison today.



It made me want to watch The Wedding Singer, because I remember that being really funny, too.

[matt35mm]

I love Billy Madison so much.  The amount of incredibly absurd stuff that happens casually kinda blows my mind.  I can't think of another movie that does it this well.  Other Sandler movies are very grounded in some kind of reality; Billy Madison takes place in a practically Lynchian universe in comparison.  Imaginary penguins, random dancing to music from nowhere, Steve Buscemi putting on lipstick while listening to Electric Light Orchestra, a bus full of kids peeing their pants, Chris Farley sucking on the imaginary penguin's beak, and so much more.  I generally don't find "random for the sake of random" humor to be funny, but this movie really gets it to work.

The Wedding Singer is good, but definitely very grounded in comparison with Billy Madison.

[jtm]

i love adam sandler. sure he's made some shitty movies, but he still makes them watchable. i guess it's just a guilty pleasure of mine.

he's the type of guy i would like to be friends with. i would even eat his baby ruth. the one PTA didn't want.

[72teeth]

thats fuckin weird that you guys bring this up, i was singing "Billy passed the third grade, oh what a glourious day..." all day yesterday

[SiliasRuby]

'Just Go With It'
This is something above most of the sandler crap that he puts out on a regular basis. The ensemble cast makes this thing actually work. I was hoping for a little bit more but I'm not sure why I thought that… Just plain bleh.

[KJ]

Does Sandler really need a definitive thread?

[ono]

Nine years ago said yes.  *shrug*

[Reelist]

Does Sandler really need a definitive thread?

yeah he does, because he puts out so much shit it's better to keep it all in one place instead of tainting the waters with a bunch of dumb threads.


Who saw That's My Boy! ? It was funny, made me laugh more than anything else I've seen recently besides maybe the new South Parks, but in the end it was all "Sound and Fury signifying nothing," as we've all sadly come to expect from the dude. Completely ridiculous, but I'll watch it again.

[mogwai]

I was thinking about which serious role of his was his best performance. And the main three in mind was PDL, Love Reign O'er Me and er... Click. To me it's the second one because it feels like he did a straight forward role rather than a wee bizarre one (PDL).

Thoughts?

[Champion Souza]

I'd say Funny People is his second best role.

[polkablues]

I'd say Funny People is his second best role.

Seconded. The movie itself was kind of a dull drag, but he was good in it.

[Reelist]

Adam was on Norm Macdonald's podcast. Fun talk, the most candid I've ever heard him in an interview. Kinda surprised he'd do this, to tell the truth. Anything for old Norm.

[tpfkabi]

This just reminded how much I hate that SNL stopped releasing season box sets.
I was always planning to buy the Farley years, which overlap with Sandler. 
Maybe the release would have worked better if they switched back and forth between eras.
Season 1, then the next release would be the first season of the next significant change, and so on, and go through that cycle and then release season 2. I don't really have much interest from Season 1 until the late 80's.
Of course, a lot of pre DVD box set era shows have to deal with licensing problems.
Never thought about why they didn't start releasing the modern era seasons, 2000's on, when they would have had the forethought about licensing.

Back to Sandman, I saw Billy Madison uncut on IFC last year, probably the first time in widescreen. Sandler's era was when VHS/Pan & Scan was king. So I wanted to have Billy and Happy on DVD and widescreen. Those movies were pretty huge. His first comedy album was pretty big. Someone must of copied a tape of it for me. I'm pretty sure I saw Big Daddy and Waterboy in the theater. After that, I didn't really see any of his comedies. I don't know if his material changed, or if it was just my own change.