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"Sandler is a non-threatening class clown, like your older or younger brother," observes Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Co., a boxoffice tracking firm in Los Angeles. And if you don't get Sandler's humor, says his former SNL boss Lorne Michaels, "then I take it you are not a 12-year-old boy. It's unfair to put Adam's comedies into the larger world of film. It is like comparing candy to the whole world of food. Everyone knows what a Snickers is and why you like it. To deconstruct it, to point out that it only has peanuts and chocolate, is to take all the fun out of eating it."
Critics can snicker, but Hollywood may soon renounce Evian and tofu for an all-Sandler diet. With the tanking of tony pictures like Beloved and One True Thing, while There's Something About Mary goes stratospheric and the Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker Rush Hour earns an astonishing $130 million, nobrow comedy is a genre for all seasons. It's a new world out there, folks. The idiots have taken over the asylum. And Adam Sandler is the Dominator of Dumb. Get used to it.
--With reporting by Elizabeth L. Bland/New York and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles