Christopher Guest and his repertory group turn their "mockumentary" style -- a style of expedience at best -- to a reunion of Sixties folkies for a live concert on public television. There's a peppy New Christy Minstrels-like nonet known as the Main Street Singers (led by the well-scrubbed faces of …
Steven Brill's update of the Depression-period Capra-Cooper antique, populism and preachiness intact, is an above-average Adam Sandler comedy, about a sweet-natured rube who inherits a bundle. (Forty billion, for inflation.) The average is raised in large part by the rest of the batting order, Peter Gallagher, Erick Avari (the one …
A road comedy, “based upon The Odyssey by Homer,” about three chain-gang fugitives in Depression-era Mississippi. (The title, should you need reminding, comes from Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels: the proposed title for a “meaningful” film by a refractory Hollywood contract director, whose subsequent quest to get in touch with the …
A comedy of knee-jerk quirkiness, from Paul Thomas Anderson, about a major-league misfit impersonated by Adam Sandler. (E.g., he stockpiles Healthy Choice puddings for the promotional offer of frequent-flyer miles, although he never flies, nor does he eat pudding.) One hardly knows which is more of a shock: that the …
Adam Sandler drama, maybe "dramedy," definitely not comedy, stretching the comedian in the role of a 9/11 widower with PTSD, an impudent excuse for him to act like a Problem Child, hanging his Dylan-haired head, ignoring direct questions, immersing himself in video games, hiding inside his headphones, banging on a …
Loser’s comedy directed by David Schwimmer (his debut behind the camera) lacks a fat boy, but has a full-grown man, “not fat … just unfit,” who indeed runs and runs. First he runs from his own wedding, leaving his pregnant fiancée at the altar, and then five years later, trying …
Lead-balloon comedy of mistaken identity. A struggling (and losing badly) Simon-and-Garfunkel-ish singing duo, in matching short-sleeve checked shirts and sleeveless V-necked red pullovers, is misidentified as a crackerjack safecracking team and framed by a Jewish mafioso into doing his bidding: knock over three safes of his choosing in one week …
An imposter substitute teacher, and local laughingstock rocker, instructs a class of grade-schoolers in What He Knows: rock-and-roll, history and practice. The participation of director Richard Linklater (Slacker, etc.) and screenwriter Mike White (The Good Girl, etc. ) might raise expectations slightly, and similarly raise the results: head of the …
For years Adam Sandler has been threatening to remake several Jerry Lewis pictures. The closest he's come is borrowing the title of a 1951 Martin & Lewis picture for this insipid, deeply misogynistic excuse for a comedy. Doing a gravelly-voiced, baby-talking variation on Al Pacino (complete with fright wig), Sandler …
A weirdie, co-written by Michael and Mark Polish, directed by only Michael, about the warming relationship of a heart-of-gold hooker and one half of a set of Siamese twins (the merely identical Polishes, who look and act a bit like Adam Sandler on Valium). The twins' synchronized movements and conspiratorial …
Howard Ratner’s (Adam Sandler) day is consumed with robbing Peter to pawn to Paul. His life is a constant juggling act, his desperate ploy a complex series of bets involving a multitude of moving parts. If he can distract his clients long enough to keep afloat everything, the rewards could …
Adam Sandler. Poster boy, more like it, for the legions who just can't take movies seriously. In this one -- a formula Disney sports story for the legions who just can't understand why Rudy wasn't in the starting lineup for Notre Dame -- he goes from being the butt of …