The Great AND Terrible Career of Adam Sandler

[Music] this video is brought to you by Skillshare how do you talk about a career like Adam Sandler's every actor I feel like especially comedic ones end up in both good and bad movies and that's fine no one expects like every Will Ferrell or Paul Rudd movie to be great but something feels different about Sandler a really bad Sandler movie feels aggressive shooting right past mediocre and into memorably terrible territory but on the right project he's also an actor that can convey a lot with just a look and whose comedic skillset can be used really really well for drama as we've all just been reminded of in uncut gems a movie he should definitely have an Oscar nomination for not to mention the best of his comedy work I still think really holds up like better than I was expecting it to when I started writing this video honestly so yeah it's a tangled complicated career and instead of tackling it in order like my past career focused videos I thought it would be interesting to go by the movie categories that kind of kept popping up as I was watching them see I think there are a few types of Adam Sandler movies and I'll try to go over them here first and foremost there's the man baby movie now I know that sounds really dismissive but I don't actually mean it to be fact is Sandler is really great at playing childish underdogs happy gilmore is probably my favorite example here you cheer for happy because it's kind of a classic snobs vs. slob setup the kind of things that comedies have been doing since Animal House really before that I mean the Marx Brothers Laurel and Hardy and even Charlie Chaplin tapped into that kind of thing all the time it's just fun to see snooty rich people shocked and appalled by our goofy leads and apparently it just always has been happy definitely has that I mean he sticks out like a sore thumb on the golf course but I think what made these early Sandler characters unique was something else rage you see it in his SNL work Billy Madison happy gilmore and plenty of other roles he's able to turn on a dime from this weird almost hurt sounding baby voice to just explosions of anger when I think of happy gilmore the first thing that comes to mind will always be Sandler screaming at the ball or getting the fistfight Sandler is able to get us on a side while also it being very clear that most of his characters could just boil over with rage at any moment often imitated by comedians especially young guys on SNL I don't think anyone has ever quite been able to capture what makes Sandler's explosions of anger is so funny and honestly even when he's in a really bad movie I'll take a Sandler performance where he's fully committing and acting like an obnoxious weirdo over one where he's phoning it in and just playing the straight man to other comedians any day Sandler is very specific mix of childishness and rage may never have been a favorite of film critics but it is absolutely what set him apart and made him a massive star which leads us to our second type of Sandler film the rom-com I might spend the least amount of time on this one because I don't think Sandler is great at romantic comedy but he's not like notably terrible at it either the wedding singer is easily the highlight here tapping into Sandler's manic energy a lot more than most of his future rom-coms would his onstage breakdown being probably the most funny scene in the film and he has some actual chemistry with drew Barrymore so it made sense when they work together again in 50 first dates which isn't as good as the wedding singer thanks to it just feeling a little more formulaic but it is a lot better than some of his recent stuff lately he's been pairing up with Jennifer Aniston and a lot of things and I just don't really think it works just go with it is terrible and while I guess the pair kind of stepped it up with murder mystery which by the way Netflix claims was their most-watched movie of 2019 it's still not good at the end of the day I just don't think these movies really tap into Sandler strengths he doesn't have all that much of chemistry with Aniston and he looks kind of like he's sleepwalking through most of them and even the movie that reunited him with Barrymore blended felt insanely lazy maybe even the worst rom-com he's ever done the next category covers a surprising amount of ground and honestly is usually the exact kind of role I grown and seen Sandler in I'm calling this the Rich Dad movie in it Sandler is generally playing a very upper-middle class guy with a few kids and a wife played by a very overqualified and good-looking actress you can see this in click Jack and Jill and probably most notably the grown-up movies now I'm not saying all of those are equally bad or anything I actually kind of have a soft spot for click but again these are the kind of roles that are pretty much the exact opposite of what I want to see Sandler in he's great as the underdog the guy who constantly feels out of place something that uncut gems taps into really well but movies like grown-ups quickly take him out of that element hating the grown-ups franchise isn't exactly a newer shocking opinion and I only revisited the first one for this video but god that was a tough movie to sit through it would be one thing if the movie were just lazy which it definitely is but it also seems to just like hate every character that isn't Sandler or one of his friends I think his persona just works a lot better when he's the weirdo and lashing out at feeling embarrassed like happy gilmore does then when he's the one doing the mocking so many jokes in this movie basically amount to like isn't it gross that the grandma thinks she's hot and that gets old really fast Sandler takes a lot of these roles and I guess that makes sense like being an actual rich dad himself he probably identifies with these characters but these days it's what he gets out of his comfort zone that I think he does his best work which finally brings us to the most interesting category the outlier movies things like uncut gems punch-drunk love meyerwitz stories and I would argue the ridiculous six let's start with that last one because I think it's a bit different than the I think ridiculous six is the worst Adam Sandler movie full stop and what puts it below even stuff like grown-ups is that Sandler is trying to do like a stoic Clint Eastwood type performance and he is really really bad at it he's painfully unfunny the whole film and the rest of the cast doesn't help much either that was his first Netflix exclusive but thankfully things got a little better from there while stuff like the do-over is just kind of forgettable actually kind of like sandy Wexler which starred Sandler as a small-time Hollywood agent in the 90s that no one really takes seriously it's far from a great movie but Sandler is really trying here and it ends up being kind of a slapstick character study of one really sad guy it got bad reviews just like most of Sandler's Netflix stuff does but I honestly think it might be his best comedy since the 2000s I should also probably mention his stand-up career which I don't have the time to linger on here but I should say that his last special 100% fresh was actually a huge bounce back for him then there's punch-drunk love director Paul Thomas Anderson built this movie around Sandler and it shows instead of playing it for Laughs Anderson takes the boiling rage of a character like Billy Madison and really digs into it like Barry Egan's biggest problem in the movie is that his emotions have trapped him into being an Adam Sandler character it uses the actors ability to fly into a rage out of nowhere to its advantage reignover me his 2007 film about a man dealing with the loss of his family after 9/11 does a similar thing but a lot more broadly and with a more over-the-top script and while I don't like rain all that much I think both show off what Sandler can do with that angry energy in the right role funny people is one of the more interesting movies Sandler has agreed to be in simply because it's basically about a depressed unhappy version of himself he plays George Simmons a beloved comedy actor whose recent work has kind of been lazy garbage when he's diagnosed with leukemia he's not really sure what to do I think the movie works asked when it's about him and the younger comedians played by Seth Rogen Aubrey Plaza and Jonah Hill they're almost friends with him but they're also constantly angling for his approval and possibly a job it's a dynamic that I haven't seen on screen that many times before and Sandler is really good at playing the guy who is just tired of all of it of being the person that everyone is nice to because they want something from him I think the movie kind of falls apart in its second half like the stuff between George and his ex-wife it feels cliche in a way that the rest of the movie doesn't and it kind of takes over the movie overall though I think funny people is another good example of how great Sandler can be when he actually you know tries Spanglish I'd probably put in that same category Sandler is pretty underrated here I think even if Spanglish overall is probably the worst of his dramatic films oh and he only has a supporting role in meyerwitz stories but he is great as a struggling dad who is never quite as successful as his brother played by Ben Stiller maybe not surprisingly jealousy turns out to be something that Sandler plays really well but honestly I think uncut gems towers over all of these performances I'm gonna try to avoid spoilers here because the movie is pretty new but seriously check it out if you haven't seen it yet Sandler plays Howard Ratner a jeweler in New York's diamond district it seems like every review of this film describes it as a two-hour panic attack or something and I get why Howard is addicted to the adrenaline his life is this tightrope act of loans pawnshop deals and big scores we don't really know how long he's lived like this but it's clear that he's always put it ahead of his family I've actually seen the movie three times now and one thing that they've really come to appreciate is how Sandler makes you care about this guy who on paper really doesn't have a lot going for him he's a crude tasteless dude who has turned his life into this game of Jenga all on his own but you can't help but cheer for him he seems to have a perfectly comfortable life and family that he could easily have just stayed with but Howard seems to live for the chaos he's not alive if he's balancing six different problems at once and Sandler is uniquely perfect casting for him it allows him to be loud obnoxious and a little crazy but taps into punch-drunk loves melancholy a bit too in Billy Madison and happy gilmore he played characters that kind of didn't want to grow up they threw temper tantrums and had the emotional reactions of nine year olds I think Howard is kind of a more complex version of that same idea there is no reason why this almost 50 year old man should be getting into fights at the nightclub where everyone is like 25 years younger than him but he can't help it it doesn't matter how much cash he has on hand or how comfortable is house is Howard needs the highs and lows of bookies and loan sharks and honestly I could have watched two more hours of this thing the safty brothers give Sandler what I think is his best movie and it's actually really funny - if not funny in the same way as most of his comedies Adam Sandler may not have the highest batting average out there but when he really commits to a character it's always worth watching and I think that's a lot more than many actors can say I really enjoy doing these career focused videos but I'll admit they're more work than usual it's just impossible to cover it all and can be a tough project to tackle if you can relate and sometimes find it hard to get motivated I highly recommend productivity 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Channel: captainmidnight

Views: 1,052,200

Keywords: Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems, Happy Gilmore, Netflix, Grown Ups, Captain Midnight, Billy Madison, Career, Funny People, SNL, Ridiculous Six, Punch Drunk Love, actor, Safdie Brothers, Oscar Nomination, captainmidnight, Sandler, Jack and Jill, Click

Id: mGilOQVIhY4

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 17 2020