Starring: Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg
Director: Sean Anders
This was a complete misread on my part, folks. I really thought I could enjoy another Adam Sandler movie, but he's just not funny anymore. I thought with Andy Samberg as the other leading role and Sean Anders, the director who's been flawless in my opinion, with Hot Tub Time Machine and She's Out of My League, that it would salvage this movie. But no, Sandler is a train wreck now and he's not even trying anymore. But the problem with Sandler is that no matter what, he's going to make these awful movies and he'll make money off of them. That's My Boy is probably the worst movie I've seen all year and you're best to avoid this one at all costs.
The gist of the movie is that Sandler plays Donny - a drunken asshole who in middle school, knocked up his teacher. Absurdly enough, he gains full custody of the child because the teacher is sent to jail. It's a really dumb premise (but all of Sandler's movies are - even Billy Madison was childish), but the way it's delivered is extremely annoying. Almost all of the jokes fall flat and none of the characters are even remotely funny.
The big problem with this movie is the main character, Donny. He's annoying and not charming at all. With older Sandler titles, you at least found parts of Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore to be likeable. Here, Donny's rude, crude and just plain awful. At no point do you understand why his son would want him back in his life. Plus, the other minor characters are almost too weird to function in this movie. It's as if the writers decided that having characters who are so oddball and quirky were funny enough. The only really funny character was Milo Ventimiglia's character who played this weird brother who's in the army. And that's mainly due to his performance more than the material.
And Donny's voice! Unnnnhhhh his voice! If you remember Sandler at all back from his days when he made comedy albums, he had this character called the Buffoon. It was probably his worst character he made (wait, no, Jill from Jack and Jill tops that!). He puts on this awful voice (much like Donny's) and talks about his butthole the whole time. It's not funny and apparently Sandler thought it was time to dig into the well to create his character for this movie.
There may have been some funny moments or jokes in the movie, but I couldn't tell you what they were, because I forgot them amidst all the awfulness. It's like eating a roast beef sandwich with all this crap stuffed into it - mustard, lettuce, tomatoes - you can't even taste the roast beef because the rest of the crappy ingredients overwhelm you. There may have been some funny jokes, but they got lost amidst all the really, really bad ones.
Adam Sandler himself hasn't made a great movie in a long, long time. I thought Funny People was great, but that's more of a Judd Apatow movie than Sandler. You'd have to go back all the way to 2004 to find a decent Adam Sandler comedy (50 First Dates). I think this was the death knell for movie - I'm not even going to bother watching any more of his movies. Yes, this movie was the final nail in the coffin for me!
Rating: Avoid Like the Plague!
No comments:
Post a Comment