Sandler, Seriously

By Jess Cagle Monday, Oct. 14, 2002
    • COLUMBIA

    Emily Watson and Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love

    Say you're a college sophomore and you've been assigned to write a thesis on the art of comedy. Like many an industrious student in the information age, you go to the Internet and purchase one. On a website that sells dissertations and theses, you comb through papers on Moliere, Chaucer and Shakespeare until you find one you like: "Adam Sandler's Big Daddy: Utopian Qualities and Social Propaganda," a bargain at just under $200.

    It begins, "The impracticality of Utopian qualities as they exist in the movie Big Daddy is a decidedly obvious deduction ... [Big Daddy] speaks to the grave deficit in man's quest to define human happiness." It goes on for 12 more pages, using some mighty fancy words to describe the cultural resonance of Sandler's 1999 hit, in which he befriends a little boy and shows the kid how to urinate against a wall.


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    Critics might want to start downloading because with Punch-Drunk Love (see review), the cultural significance of Sandler's work has become a serious proposition. In his new movie, Sandler plays a plunger salesman who dreams of escaping his banal existence via frequent-flyer miles. As far as romantic comedies go, it's very strange, which is what you would expect from director Paul Thomas Anderson of Magnolia and Boogie Nights. What you don't expect is an art film starring Sandler, whose lowbrow comedies have earned nearly $400 million since 1998 and have made him an idol of teenage boys, a cult figure on college campuses and a punch line for dismissive film critics. Punch-Drunk Love — for which Anderson received a best-director award at Cannes — is making the dumb-and-dumber Sandler persona seem smart and smarter.

    The story of comic actors doing serious turns is as old as Buster Keaton and as contemporary as Jim Carrey. But, in fact, Sandler, like the greatest of Hollywood stars, hasn't really changed at all. Rather, Hollywood has adapted to him. Sandler, 36, is not the kind of actor who "stretches." Like Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Stewart, Sandler ultimately plays himself, which is what his fans pay money to see. Sandler's shrewd move is to keep playing Adam Sandler and get a thoughtful movie made around him.

    Like the Cajun numskull in 1998's The Waterboy, Sandler's character in Punch-Drunk Love, Barry Egan, is prone to violence but hates himself for it. Like the rich slacker who returns to elementary school as an adult in 1995's Billy Madison, Egan is ultimately redeemed by the unwarranted love of a woman (Emily Watson). Some will say Sandler has developed an edge — indeed, the R-rated Punch-Drunk Love is much darker than, say, The Wedding Singer — but Sandler has always had a dark side. It has been relegated to his successful, warning-labeled comedy albums. Now, as his fans get older, he's bringing his own more mature side to the screen.

    Sandler's comic gift is that he can make a weirdo like Egan sympathetic without being sentimental. He never resorts to the emotional tics so beloved by comedians in dramatic roles. Despite the violent physicality of some of his characters, Sandler himself seems to lack the underlying rage that fuels other comics' work. Says Lorne Michaels, who was Sandler's boss on Saturday Night Live: "There's something that's essentially optimistic about him. He's one of the few people I know who's not embarrassed about doing comedy. He think it's a high goal."

    Sandler never seemed to doubt that the world would come around to seeing it his way. He got his big break on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s as part of anew generation of comics that included Chris Rock, David Spade and Rob Schneider. They gave a creative jolt to SNL, but the baby-boomer executives at nbc were mystified by Sandler's humor. Michaels says, "The idea that somebody was trying to make people laugh and it wasn't for them or it wasn't aimed at them — that was a big revelation."

    Sandler was dumped from the show in 1995. Fortunately for him, that was the same year Billy Madison was released. It was a hit with teens, and Sandler followed it in 1996 with Happy Gilmore. Suddenly the comedian who had been fired back East was being courted out West. "Adam has always been more highly regarded in Hollywood than by the critics," says an agent who knows him. "Anyone with kids usually likes him because their kids are so into him."

    There's a jokey axiom in Hollywood: Show business is a homophobic, anti-Semitic industry dominated by homosexuals and Jews. In reality, Sandler is widely admired within the entertainment community for proudly proclaiming his Jewish heritage. And it's one reason that audiences of all stripes like him: Adam Sandler seems authentic; he's not hiding anything. His hilarious Chanukah Song, which he introduced on Saturday Night Live, is considered a holiday classic.

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