it’s so fucking funny to me that adam sandler has played something as profound as a man with crippling social anxiety who discovers how to love somebody and subsequently how to love himself, after a life spent being assured there’s nothing to be loved in him by a family for whomst ‘dreadful’ is too simple a descriptor
and he’s also played a fucking furious young man who got so fucking mad at hockey and who loved his grandmother so much that he became a global golf superstar about it, who goes on to re-bridge the gap between the businessowner and the common laborer by helping his ex-boss beat some golfer dipshit they both hate to death
somewhere in there he plays a success-obsessed father who believes that accumulating enough wealth and endlessly seeking ever-shifting goals solidifies his place as a family man, rather than valuing and nurturing his relationship with his family; in the midst of this pre-existing emotional turmoil he is given the de facto power of a god with a fucking Television Remote and then he fast-forwards intercourse with his wife and dies about it
traumatized 9/11 survivor, man feigning gay romance and marriage with his widowed best friend so that he can receive financial benefits for his children, Satan’s Least Cool Son, fucking Dracula....
no shit, the dude has had the most delightful filmography. maybe that’s inherent to somebody who has a career running decades, 1989 to 2019 just for films themselves (Going Overboard to Uncut Gems), but i think there’s something especially to be said when it’s a person who *so* rarely opts for a dramatic picture, who a thousand times more often opts for the deeply boring safe capital c Comedy flick
it’s as weirdly diverse in areas as it is entirely identical in areas; the Big Daddy era of his filmography (i call it the Boyfriend Sandler era) has some really obvious repeating plot elements of haughty women leaving him because he’s a fucking slob and then he becomes a Success Story/Lawyer (Big Daddy. yes. also The Wedding Singer, but it’s done better there, because the Wedding Singer is a fucking DELIGHTFUL film) or something and gets mad at them when they’re like ‘actually you’re hot as hell now because you became an adult’ and he tells them to go away
i’m typing entirely too much about adam sandler films.... if i’m not careful people are going to realise that i actually like them and some of them are good (NOT all of them. oh god no. the ridiculous 6 is a blight upon our homes.)
