BIG DADDY (1999) ** Is it a coincidence, or irony, that the clip shown in the middle of the film is Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein, rather than Burl Ives as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ? I don't know. I do know that Adam Sandler is an all-time great class clown, and that he's disturbing the other students, just not enough. His character isn't disturbing me. I admire someone who heroically avoids going to work for someone, or something, else after spending twenty years of their youth being educated. Shows they learned something. What disturbs me about Mr. Sandler is that he suffers an attention disorder, and that it effects his work. Here, for example, he keeps himself reigned in (except for the abrasive New Yorker stuff, which is too funny and morally defensible to be distracting) for about half the film. Gives the other characters a little room, lets flowers start growing, even blooming, on his character, allows for some plot development. Then, all of a sudden, he throws things into this truly awful, terrible, spasmodic slapstick sentimentalist gear, piling on the schmaltz with the same enthusiasm that he used to demonstrate in his brilliant skits with Chris Farley. Too much, yeah, but the problem is too what. But you still gotta like the guy. It does my heart good to see him wandering around his place in an Emerson Boozer shirt: yeah, Namath was the greatest, but he didn't do it alone. And it's cool to defend Styx. But the musical thing: it's strange. They butcher (probably to make the Styx still sound ok) songs by Neil Young and Guns N' Roses, then when it's time for the credits they don't admit it all, and claim things that didn't happen. Probably the same researcher who scripted the court scene. If Sandler's so damn tough, why's he need any co-counsel, much less five of 'em, for a preliminary custody hearing? Looking at the five, I understand why, once in, you keep thinking that it's not enough. Watch that first step, it's a slippery slope.
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