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| Directed by Dennis Dugan; Starring Adam Sandler, Cole and Dylan Sprouse, Joey Lauren Adams, Leslie Mann, Josh Mostel, Jon Stewart, Kristy Swanson, Rob Schneider, and Steve Buscemi |
Let’s face it, I have never in my life actually liked a film that Adam Sandler has appeared in. Not Billy Madison, not Happy Gilmore, not Airheads. All of those films garnered ratings in the D and F range. Then he surprised me with The Wedding Singer, which only had a marginal thumb down, so I thought maybe he was on his way to a somewhat good start towards choosing better scripts. That idea was pretty much thrown out the window after his next film, The Waterboy. All of the charm that was present in The Wedding Singer was gone and now he was turning back to the Chris Farley-David Spade realm of post Saturday Night Live acting. So I was back to dismay when entering his new film Big Daddy. What I found was not the charm of The Wedding Singer, but at least much more laughs than his other work.
Big Daddy follows what happens when Sonny Kaufax (Sandler) is stuck with the five year old love-child of his engaged roommate Kevin (Stewart). Named Julian, the kid (the Sprouse twins) is attempted to be taken back to social services, but it is closed due to Columbus Day and Sonny is forced to bond with Julian and sees the child as a jumping board to show his girlfriend (Swanson) that he is able to do things on his own, then she proceeds to dump him for an older man. Like a small child with a puppy, Sonny is hooked and now must have this small wonder to help him do fun things like throwing sticks into the paths of rollerbladers so they can fall in the pond. When the social worker (Mostel) attempts to check on everything, Sonny says he is Kevin in hopes that he can keep Julian. Well the social worker sets him off with the kid and Sonny attempts to bring Julian up in a slacker form, allowing Julian to do or not do whatever he wants. All along the way, Sonny finds himself in a relationship with Layla (Adams), the sister of Kevin’s Sonny-hating fiancé (Mann).
I did laugh a few times at the film, almost all of which were jokes from or on Steve Buscemi as a homeless man. The film does have its moments, but nothing more. The whole last act is useless fodder that I was not interested in the least (especially the whole court scene). The rumor that Sandler is supposedly putting up a more adult performance is a lie as this is just a passive aggressive play on his Happy Gilmore character. I liked Adams in the film, as she showed why such good actors in independent films should be forced to do awful stuff like this when trying for Hollywood mainstream (can we say Sophie Marceau?). And then there is Steve Buscemi, who could make me laugh at just running a cart into a tree, which he does in this film. For Adam Sandler, it is great, for a film in general, it is pretty weak.
