CC26: Adam sandler: Now with 50% less plot!

I finally got around to watching "grown ups" and figured that the title is the only form of irony Americans can understand: blunt and obvious. I say this because the movie was one of the worst pieces of shit ever to be committed to film. Really if you thought this movie was good than please felate the nearest gun-barrel.

The thing is, I used to be a HUGE adam sandler fan. He was usually the only SNL star to get laughs out of me consistently and without resorting to the lowest common-denominator. A cock which most of the stars of "grown ups" have firmly wrapped their lips around and are sucking for all it's worth. But then one movie changed all that, one movie which was so resoundingly bad it's beggars belief that the guy who hit out "the waterboy" could think this shit was funny: Mr Deeds.

Or should I say the remake? I don't. Purely because I don't want to sully the reputation of a perfectly good movie (regarded in some circles as a "classic") by associating it with this turgid dross. It'd be like if there was a brutal rapist with the name surname as you and everyone just assumed you were related, and then stopped asking you out for nights on the town for fear they'd be dragged into an alleyway by their own paranoia.

Mr deeds isn't funny no matter what level you take it at. It's not even one of those "so bad it's funny in spite of itself" movies. This presents a huge problem. When a comedy isn't funny the audience instantly look to the characters for some sort of emotional support. If they can't laugh it's usually because they don't fully understand the characters (imagine trying to find quagmire funny without the knowledge that he's a heartless sex hound)

This is where it all unravels. Sandler isn't actually a character he's just this horrific non-entity bouncing from one scene to another spewing out lines with virtually no comedic timing. You could have achieved the same effect by writing his lines onto tennis balls, loading them into a launcher, and wheeling it out on cue. Actually that would've been fucking brilliant as it would've involved winona ryder getting plastered in the face forty times a minute with tennis balls. Normally she's quite a good actress but if she'd have gotten prison-time for shoplifting she wouldn't have been in this so no sympathy there.

The plot is so weak (which is strange given it's written by the same guy who did the previous eight, yes fucking eight, sandler movies) even the moments where it's not trying to be funny are hilariously contrived. There's one scene where they buy bikes off of kids to go for a ride through central park in the middle of the night. To anyone on planet earth this a fantastic way to get raped and beaten, but on planet sandler (where there are dick jokes in the constitution and having an IQ over 100 is grounds for exile) this is simply a light-hearted romantic moment.

Then there was "50 first dates" a film where he's dating a girl with a wierd sort of love amnesia and can't remeber things on a day-to-day basis. The good news is sandler can roll out his tired lines and she'll think it's gold every time. The bad news is that this is pretty much how he's been conducting his entire career for the last ten fucking years. Treating his audience as if they've all got some extremely specific memory issues and then rolling out the same bullshit he did last time. There was a scene in "50 first dates" where one if the characters states, during one of the numerous awkward pauses where acting is meant to take place, that he's "had enough" and leaves. At that time I turned to my friend and said "So have I" and left as well.

"Click" was another movie that pissed me off. A movie where a guy gets a remote that can fast-forward him past the boring bits of his life. Which ,if you're watching it on DVD, is exactly what you've got too. It wasn't that it was poorly acted or that the jokes were atrocious it was just a poorly constructed thing from start to finish. Even the whole concept of a remote control that can alter the universe is so badly used that I almost started shouting ideas for how sandler might use the fucking thing better (like pointing it at Kate Beckinsales' clothing and pressing the delete button). The problem is that his character displays such retarded reasoning that, in the real world, he would be trusted to build a fort out of fucking pillows than become a partner at an architectural firm.

One scene goes like this: He has a big project coming up on the forth of July. He's faced with the dilemma of either going camping with his family or doing his work and getting that huge promotion. Normally this is standard fare fork-in-the-road bullshit that romantic comedies pullout. But add in his ability to control time itself and this problem becomes pretty fucking easy. Pause the world, do the work, go camping, bang Kate Beckingsale in a tent. There. Easy. But , wait! What does he do? He just goes and skips the entire weekend altogether! What the fuck? Who put this fucking muppet in charge?

He does try to appease his fanboy fan-base though where in one sequence he fast-forwards to find out his wife marries another man because he's too much of a workaholic. So what does he do? He pauses the seemingly nice guy in mid-walk and kicks him in the bollocks. Three fucking times. This is possibly the only scene of testicular torture that only made me wince because the scene so so so badly done.

Then it goes and gets really serious at the end. And winds up producing the funniest scene in the entire movie hands down. After arriving at the end of his life he's lying in a hospital drive in the rain dying slowly of a heart attack. That's the funniest scene in the movie.

All this brings me back to "grown-ups" (I completely hated "funny people" too but that's a post for when I've upgraded the bile filters on my laptop to be able to deal with the waves of searing hate that pour when I begin to talk of that film) For it's a film that really could have been great but just didn't put the effort in. Which makes it even far greater a failure. It's essentially an SNL reunion under the guise of a "buddy" movie. Whereby your treated to actual jokes being told by actual comedians. Other than that it's just Kevin "Chris farl...no wait" james hurting himself while everyone else goes "ooooooh!"

It's just five guys cracking wise. Like Ocean's 11 without the heist. Or the charisma. Or the good-looking actors. Or the plot. Or the.....Ah fuck it! The thing is this movie leaves people very divided. One friend once told me that he got to stare at Salma Hayek for two hours and there are worse ways to spend two hours. I told him go watch Desperado. That way he could see more of her and the thing getting pounded would NOT be his cerebellum.

This film probably came about when Rob Schneider called up Sandler and asked for a film to pay for his new boat when sandler just said "fuck it, let's go on vacation, two birds one stone". One conference call later the cast are in the hills watching David spade call him a fartbrain, Chris rock calling Kevin james fat, sandler cracking on rock for being black and no-one making fun of sandler because he's the one piloting this money-plane into their fucking wallets.

It's really hard to think that a movie staffed almost entirely by good professional comedians could fail to be funny. Surely someone thought that locking the SNL cast in a room would produce something special but all we get are bad one-liners and Yo mama jokes for two, solid, fucking, hours. I mean, come on, a movie about people making fun of Rob Schneider has got be like shooting fish in a barrel. Unfortunately none of the cast can even graze the fucking barrel. With his antics he just begs to be torn apart but we are let down each time.

All of this makes me angry, not because I consider films as art and these films are the artistic equivalent of a penis drawn on the cover of a copybook, but beacuse sandler CAN actually act. He really can. Okay slag off "punch drunk love" all you want but watch "reign over me" and tell me the fucker with the weird hair can't act. He's great in that movie! Anyone who can hold their own against Don Cheadle in a Drama deserves serious kudos.

I suppose he's waiting for them to create the"longest dick joke made by a third-rate hack" Oscar award then he's a shoe-in, provided Rob Schneider dies first................