Shampoo is better.
I go on first and clean the hair.
Conditioner is better.
This is Billy Madison, one of Adam Sandler's most
iconic characters.
But that clip could have just easily
have been Bobby Boucher or Happy Gilmore
or any of the other characters Sandler
played throughout the mid '90s and early 2000s.
Mama says that alligators are ornery because they
got all them teeth but no toothbrush.
They say that hindsight is 2020.
So in 2023 we can look back and recognize
the simple key to Adam Sandler's successful career--
he played the exact same character for a decade.
[LAUGHS] Shut up!
Before his rise to movie stardom,
Sandler had a brief stint on The Cosby Show,
performed in comedy clubs, and was a writer and performer
on SNL.
In the early '90s he found himself
in fever dreams like Shakes the Clown and cult classics
like Coneheads and Airheads.
But he was always sharing the spotlight with bigger names.
He wouldn't find major success as a solo star
until 1995, and from then until around 2005, he
was on top of the world.
Billy Madison?
[IMITATES FART]
[LAUGHTER, CHEERING]
As both the star and co-writer of Billy Madison,
audience expectations were high, and he met them.
It debuted at number one in the box office
the weekend it released and easily made back
its meager $10 million budget.
But what it really made was an impact.
Like many Adam Sandler movies to come after it,
Billy Madison is a wealth of hilarious quotes
and memorable moments that we're still laughing at today.
I disagree.
It's a very good game, but I think Donkey Kong is the best
game ever.
Donkey Kong sucks.
You know something?
You suck.
Sandler definitely understood what he was there to do,
and he did it flawlessly, which led
to several more productions looking
to recapture that magic.
Happy Gilmore came out only a year later,
receiving a somewhat kinder reaction from critics
and still raking in almost $40 million at the box office.
And the Wedding Singer pushed things
even higher both critically and financially in 1998.
But the true turn of the tides came with 1998's The Waterboy.
H2O.
(SINGSONGY) Gatorade.
H2O.
(SINGING) Water sucks.
It really, really sucks.
Once again starring and co-written by Sandler,
Waterboy may not have been able to sway critics,
but it did make $185 million theatrically on a $23 million
budget.
Needless to say, this smashed all of Sandler's previous box
office records and officially cemented him
as a household name.
Remember when Bobby Boucher showed up at half time
and the Mud Dogs won the Bourbon Bowl, do you?
[CHEERING]
A year later he created his own production company,
Happy Madison, named for the first two movies
that jumpstarted his career.
From there, ran full steam ahead,
writing and producing his own movies in a similar vein
and casting many of his friends alongside him.
Adam Sandler found a sort of niche in the movie market
that he could fill.
To break down what that means, we'll
take a closer look at some of Adam Sandler's most
notable roles in just a second.
But first, make sure you subscribe to Nerdstalgic
if you're into videos like this one.
(SINGING) Back to school to prove to Dad
that I'm not a fool.
Billy Madison is the story of a well-intentioned, slightly
obnoxious buffoon who repeats elementary school
in the hopes of taking over his father's company.
In the process, he meets a beautiful and intelligent
teacher named Veronica Vaughn--
Jackpot.
--who initially dismisses him until he
proves himself to be a little more kindhearted,
and the two live happily ever after.
Happy Gilmore is the story of a well-intentioned, slightly
obnoxious buffoon who has to pay off his grandmother's
debts by throwing down his hockey stick
and picking up a golf club.
In the process, he meets a beautiful and intelligent
public relations director named Virginia Venit who initially
dismisses him until he proves himself to be
a little more level-headed.
Slow down.
I don't want to be more than friends.
I just met you.
And the two live happily ever after.
The Waterboy is the story of a well-intentioned,
slightly obnoxious-- well, you get the point.
Even Billy Madison himself would be
able to see the patterns here.
That's quacktastic.
Practically everything about Sandler's most beloved movies
is copied from another one of his successes.
One could make the argument that this is par for the course
when making comedy movies centered around one
big star in the '90s.
After all, every Robin Williams movie
made use of his improv and impersonation skills,
and Jim Carrey's movies were mostly
just a framing device for his unbelievable physical comedy.
But this idea is much more intense
when it comes to Sandler.
It's as though Sandler is playing a single character
across multiple bizarre universes.
Sure, one aspect of that character's personality
might be further leaned into, but it is very much
still the same character.
He even tends to employ the same set of voices
to every role he plays.
Take Robbie Hart in The Wedding Singer,
who is timid and soft spoken.
Why do you need to leave Ridgefield?
We grew up here.
Until a moment requires him to be full of rage.
Once again, things that could have been brought
to my attention yesterday!
And compare him to Happy Gilmore, who
is full of rage and irritation.
I seen those finger paintings you bring home, and they suck!
Until a moment requires him to be soft spoken.
I'm sorry, babe.
I didn't mean that.
The character's core pillar of personality may be flipped,
but the result is still essentially the same.
Sandler's characters are often bullied by a successful jerk
or a comedic bit character.
The women in his life tend to have
an almost saintly level of patience for the wild antics he
gets up to.
And when his love interest's name isn't alliterative,
it rhymes.
Julia's last name is going to be Gulia.
Julia Gulia.
That's funny.
Even the rest of the cast surrounding Sandler
ends up fairly homogeneous.
Rob Schneider and Steve Buscemi found their way
into virtually every Adam Sandler movie ever made,
and Drew Barrymore appeared in two of his movies
around this time.
It's no wonder why so many of these movies
came out in such quick succession
if you consider how many aspects were cut and pasted directly
from previous scripts.
But clearly none of this was particularly a bad thing.
Once he had established his formula and persona,
audiences continued to show up to Sandler's films
over the years.
Huge financial successes like Big Daddy, Mr. Deeds, 50 First
Dates, and The Longest Yard overshadowed bombs
like Little Nicky and Eight Crazy Nights.
But even the early movies have accumulated cult followings.
This is in no small part due to the inherent charisma
of Adam Sandler and his specific brand of comedy.
You're mad at your dad, not at me.
I forgive you.
(CRYING) Yeah, I am.
I hate my father.
To hand wave Sandler's star power
and try to dismiss him as a one-trick pony
is to do him a major disservice.
During this space of time around '95 to 2005,
audiences were drawn to him, and so were
other writers and directors.
They understood that there was more to Sandler's performances
than jokes and funny voices.
Sandler found critical success with movies
like 2004's Punch-Drunk Love, where
he was able to fully explore the deep sadness and loneliness
that many of his more popular characters
harbored under the surface.
If there was ever any doubt, his role
as Barry Egan proved that he was never a one-note actor,
even if a lot of his movies post 2005 suggest otherwise.
Also I'm wearing a suit today because I
had a very important meeting this morning,
and I don't have a crying problem.
OK.
2006's Click was the first Adam Sandler movie
that fans and critics seem to mutually dislike.
Though it made a ridiculous amount of money,
it became clear that times were changing and so were
the expectations of audiences.
Sandler tried to pivot two years later
with Don't Mess with the Zohan, a film that certainly can't
be accused of featuring a carbon copy of his old characters.
What it can be accused of, however, is being bad.
Things only got worse from here with Pixels, the Grown Ups
franchise, and the universally despised Jack and Jill.
And that's not even mentioning his deal
with Netflix that produced some of the lowest-tier movies
to date, which were all somehow wildly successful.
It seemed that the further away from the golden years he got,
the worse his movies became.
I disagree.
In 2019, his starring role in Uncut Gems,
which earned him a best male lead in the Independent Spirit
Awards, reminded a whole new generation of viewers
that he is more than the guy who yells at children,
tackles the elderly, and makes antiquated vacation
comedies with his buddies.
Both the serious and light-hearted versions
of Adam Sandler have their place in Hollywood history.
Perhaps we've grown tired of the latter in more recent years,
but we wouldn't have one without the other.
You got that, baby?
Plenty more where that came from.
Yeah!
If Adam Sandler hadn't spent an entire decade
playing the same character, garnering a massive fan base,
and raking in millions of dollars,
he wouldn't have been able to work on projects like Uncut
Gems, and he wouldn't be able to return to nostalgic form
in projects like Hubie Halloween.
Nobody would have given him the opportunity
to do so without his long list of impressive accomplishments
trailing along behind him.
This is me.
This is how I win.
Well, that's it for today's video.
Thanks so much for watching all the way to the end.
If you haven't, make sure you like it
and subscribe to Nerdstalgic so you don't miss the next one.
And if you're still here, let us know down
in the comments-- what's your favorite Adam Sandler movie?