sophisticates. (In a 2014 piece, critic Bilge Ebiri identified the
unifying characteristic of the Sandler oeuvre as “The profound sense
of self-loathing at the heart of all his work.”) And there are exactly as
many decent gags – including a bit of business involving an ornate
dagger being dislodged from and then returned to the sternum of
Terence Stamp – to make you feel like you haven’t totally wasted
your 97 minutes. Unlike ceaseless striver Will Smith, another high-
profile Netflix signing, Sandler has proven a natural baggy fit for the
streaming service; his is a supremely slumped screen presence,
and to watch him in sweatpants seems only correct.This canny underachiever, however, has now outlasted generations
of comic stars. In the decade following the release of Happy Gilmore
Sandler enjoyed a streak of box-office success, though his middle
period on the whole renders up more interesting films – by which I
mean overreaching, uneven, ambitious, earnest and imbecilic ones.
Where Sandler’s 2002 Mr Deeds directly remakes a Frank Capra
property, Click (2006) is the superior Capra-esque production, a
reworking of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Anticipating smartphone
addiction, the plot has Sandler using a magic universal remotecontrol to fast forward through the onerous moments in his life,
only later to look back and berate himself for skimming through his
existence on the fast track to the grave. I Now Pronounce You Chuck
& Larry (2007) and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (2008) both
find Sandler continuing in soapbox mode, respectively proposing to
ameliorate homophobia and the Arab-Israeli conflict, in the latter
film giving perhaps his single best performance.In both Jack and Jill (2011) and That’s My Boy (2012), Sandlerian
self-loathing is firmly located as rooted in class anxiety, rearing
its head in return-of-the-repressed scenarios. In Jack and Jill,
Sandler plays a double role as both successful Los Angeles ad
exec Jack Sadelstein and his twin sister, Jill, who stayed behind
in the Bronx, rudely reminding her brother of his working-class
origins with an extended visit. In That’s My Boy, the mortification
belongs to upwardly mobile Andy Samberg who, on the eve of his
picture-perfect Cape Cod wedding, is visited by his embarrassment
of a father, an unreconstructed Masshole party animal who,
while still an adolescent, sired Junior in a teacher-student
sex scandal.028 The Uncut Gems Issue