(Upbeat electronic music)
- (Michael) *gibberish*
- (Michael) Today, it’s time to give one of the most divisive comedians his due: Adam
Sandler.
- (Sandler/Billy Madison) *giberrish*
- (Michael) A lot of critics have dismissed Sandler as the low-point of modern comedy.
His films have been called juvenile, amateurish, lazy, and just plain awful.
After years of vicious criticism, Sandler says he no longer even reads his own reviews,
saying:
“I did stop reading them. It didn’t make sense to me, and it screwed my thinking up
a little bit. When we were writing the next one, me and my buddy were like, “You think
they’re going to hate this if we do this?” And we started saying, “What’s the difference?””
The only time Sandler gets even a modicum of critical respect is when he steps out of
his ‘comfort zone’ and takes on meatier roles
But even then -- critics use these films as further proof of Sandler’s laziness. The
implication seems to be: If he’s capable of such nuanced performances, why has he squandered
his talents in tasteless comedies?
The same pattern repeated itself just last year: Sandler starred in one of his most critically
acclaimed films yet -- Uncut Gems. Many even thought Sandler deserved an Academy Award
nomination for his performance. But critics still painted Uncut Gems as a rare exception
in Sandler’s career, a brief bright spot amidst his usual dumpster fires.
However we here at Wisecrack think the opposite - Uncut Gems isn’t a rare exception in Sandler’s
filmography. Rather, it’s the culmination of Sandler’s entire career. That is to say:
Sandler’s past works - Billy Madison, Grown Ups, Mr. Deeds, and yes, even Jack and Jill
- were merely covert preparation for his best role yet. So... Welcome to this Wisecrack Edition
on The Genius of Adam Sandler. Spoilers ahead for Uncut Gems, and a few classic Sandler comedies.
- (Michael) On the surface, Uncut Gems seems like a pretty big departure for the ‘Sand-Man’.
In the film, Sandler stars as Howard Ratner-- a Diamond District jeweler always looking
to make a quick buck, this time from a glitzy Ethiopian opal. Problem is: Howard’s a gambling addict.
- (Sandler/Howard) Do you take lightning bets? - (Man) Yeah but you don’t want any part
of lightning bets, come on. - (Sandler/Howard) Come on, a thousand dollars
a point, ok? Take this.
- (Michael) Already in the hole for a hundred grand to his loan shark brother-in-law, Arno.
After approximately 90 minutes of blood-pressure-raising shenanigans, Howard sells the opal to NBA
player Kevin Garnett as a good luck charm. But instead of using this cash to pay off
his debts immediately, Howard bets big on the Celtics (believing Garnett will have a
great game)
- (Sandler/Howard) There’s a bet in that bag. I want you to take all of it, all of
it inside the bag and place it on that bet. - (Woman) How much is in that bag?
- (Sandler/Howard) There’s a lot.
- (Michael) And locks Arno and his goons behind bullet-proof glass in his store to watch how
the game plays out. The bet appears to pay off -- the Celtics win, and Howard scores
the millions he’s been after… But it’s too late. When he unlocks the door, Arno’s
goons are so fed up by his antics, they shoot him dead and rob his jewelry store. Not the
typical Sandler happy ending.
- (Sandler/Happy) Oh my god! (Crowd cheers)
- (Announcer) Incredible!
- (Michael) If you haven’t seen this film: it is VERY good. Like a 2-hour-long panic
attack that you somehow remember fondly. It’s also a dark gritty drama with not a single
scatalogical joke or pratfall to be found in its two hour plus runtime. Yet there’s
one thing Uncut Gems shares with all of Sandler’s previous films.
See, throughout Sandler’s career -- he’s cultivated one specific comedic persona. No
matter the role-- be it a wealthy heir, a waterboy, the son of Satan or a Diamond district
jeweler-- each Sandler character is essentially the same: an emotionally stunted man-child.
In 1970, scholar and Jungian psychoanalyst Marie-Louise Von Franz identified a growing
trend in young men: They refused to grow the eff up. This persona is called the ‘puer
aeternus’: Latin for the ‘eternal child.’ In her book, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus,
Von Franz stated-
“...the man who identified with the archetype of the puer aeternus remains too long in adolescent
psychology; that is, all those characteristics that are normal in youth of seventeen or eighteen
are continued into later life...”
It’s worth noting that The Problem of the Puer Aeternus came out right on the heels
of the 1960s -- a decade defined by the sudden emergence of ‘Youth Culture.’ The youth
of the 1960s rebelled against previous generations, rejecting traditional norms like ‘the 9-5,’‘familial
duties,’ and “not dropping acid”
Being young and carefree became idealized in pop culture and people began holding onto
their youth for far longer than was traditionally acceptable. Cue: the man child.
According to Von Franz, most man-children share the same basic characteristics. They
struggle to maintain long-lasting jobs and are unable to find a place in society because
they refuse to adapt to social norms. Instead, they sit around and do pretty much nothing.
To quote Von Franz, “[The puer aeternus] lives in a continual sleepy daze... the sleepy,
undisciplined, long-legged youth who merely hangs around, his mind wandering indiscriminately,
so that sometimes one feels inclined to pour a bucket of cold water over his head.”
These men are often quite arrogant, a quality that stems from “an inferiority complex
and false feelings of superiority.” These men are also attracted to women who can replace
their mother, who can “enfold [them] in her arms and satisfy [their] every need.”
And they’re prone to dangerous acts and sports because they yearn “to get away from
reality, from the earth, from ordinary life”.
Whether you accept Von Franz’s take on modern manhood or not, you can probably see how Adam
Sandler’s early characters uniformly fit this description. It’s important to note
that Sandler isn’t just a work-for-hire comedian - he’s also a co writer on almost
all of the work in his “lower-brow” ouvre.
Thus it isn’t just Sandler’s acting, but also his writing and storytelling choices
that helped construct his man-child persona.
Take Sandler’s breakthrough performance in Billy Madison. Billy spends all his time
lounging in a pool and drinking himself into a stupor - behavior which certainly suggests
a desire to escape reality. He has no job prospects to speak of and absolutely no desire
to fit into conventional society. The most pressing thing on Billy’s mind-
- (Sandler/Billy) Shampoo is better, I go on first and clean the hair. Conditioner is
better! I leave the hair silky and smooth!
- (Michael) For this role, Sandler adopts what would become one of his trademarks: a
high pitched and garbled voice-- as if a grown man were attempting to mimic a child’s voice.
- (Sandler/Billy) Ooo that wasn’t very nice.
- (Michael) This literalizes Billy’s refusal to grow up.
When people criticize Billy, he immediately lashes out, his face scrunching up in despair
and anger, like a confounded toddler about to erupt.
- (Sandler/Billy) I hate cursive and I hate all of you!
- (Michael) Like the prototypical manchild, Billy also has a major inferiority complex..
It’s not a coincidence that his primary antagonist is Eric Gordon, a stuck-up businessman
who lords his Harvard education over Billy.
- (Eric) Second team All American - Harvard Track.
- (Michael) The only people Billy can relate to on any level at all are first-graders - Once
back in elementary school, he’s in his element... There his silly jokes aren’t met with indifferent
stares but actual laughter.
- (Sandler/Billy) What do you think Mr. Blue Duck? ‘That’s quacktastic!’”
- (Michael) Even Billy’s romantic interest fits Von Franz’s puer aeternus description:
teacher Veronica Vaughn serves as a maternal figure to Billy, helping this man-child study
and grow.
Throughout Sandler’s early films, he consistently plays this same child-like figure lashing
out at an adult world that doesn’t know what to make of him. In the first ten minutes
of Happy Gilmore, Happy beats up a coach who dares to mock him.
- (Sandler/Happy) You think you’re better than me?!
- (Michael) Then he goes home to his girlfriend-- a teacher, yet again-- and asks her to stay
the night because he’s had a rough day. Just like Billy, Happy wants a maternal figure
to make everything better. But this time, the girlfriend has no interest in babying
Sandler’s manchild. She calls Happy a loser and leaves.
- (Girlfriend) I am not spending the rest of my life with a loser!
- (Michael) Afterwards, Happy goes to the batting cage, where he proceeds to let baseballs
hit him directly in the face: an act Von Franz would undoubtedly label a ‘dangerous sport.’
Happy, through this pain, seeks to escape the reality of his failures. And the only
person impressed by these immature antics? You guessed it -- a child.
- (Child) Awesome!
- (Michael) In Sandler’s next film The Waterboy, he goes even further, playing Bobby-- a juvenile
man-child who still lives with his momma.
- (Momma) Did he tell you about his little bedtime problem?
- (Sandler/Bobby) Momma, I’m begging you, don’t.
- (Momma) That’s a sheet back there.
- (Michael) Much of the comedy in The Waterboy stems from Bobby’s childlike responses to
the adult world.
- (Woman) Is there a girl you’re seeing? - (Sandler/Bobby) Seeing? I, I see a lot of
girls.
- (Michael) Again, Sandler emphasizes the character’s childlike naivete, adopting
a baby-ish lisp and stutter, and slouching like an uncomfortable kid at school. And like
a child, Bobby legitimately struggles to retain eye-contact with anybody.
However, as Sandler got older, his depictions of the man-child began to grow. Take 1999’s
Big Daddy, in which Sandler stars as Sonny Koufax, a 32-year old slacker with no job
or prospects to speak of. The film opens exactly like Happy Gilmore -- with Sonny’s girlfriend
breaking up with him because of his immature lifestyle.
- (Sandler/Sonny) Why’re you being so nuts to me lately?
- (Girlfriend) Because you refuse to move on to the next phase of your life!
- (Michael) But unlike previous films, Big Daddy focuses less on Sandler’s immature
antics and more on his maturation. Sandler here eschews many of his early trademark signatures,
like the baby voice or childish slouch. Instead, Sandler adopts a disaffected slacker attitude
- as if Sonny were in a perpetual haze watching life pass him by. But after Sonny takes in
an abandoned child, he’s forced to grow up and become a father-figure.
Sandler’s character no longer wets the bed… Now he’s the one who has to clean up the
mess.
By the end of Big Daddy, Sonny turns his life around -- becoming a successful lawyer with
a wife and child of his own.
That’s a pretty big departure from--
- (Sandler/Billy) I’ve got to send him back to the South Pole.
- (Michael) But this was just the beginning of Sandler’s maturation. When the comedian
reached his forties, he became a family man - literally, and on screen. Sandler’s films
during this later period reflect his own personal growth as a husband and father, while presenting
a more nuanced outlook on the man-child.
Sandler’s later films typically spotlight a former man-child, who now in middle age,
feels weighed down by domestic responsibilities. This Sandler character yearns to return to
the freedom of childhood - that is, he wants to become a man-child once again. The film
that best encapsulates this latter Sandler-period outlook: None other than the off-forgotten,
Click. Yeah, that’s right -- I said it: Click.
In Click, Sandler stars as Michael Newman, an overworked architect exhausted by daily
life. When Michael gets a remote that can rewind and fast-forward through time, he also
gets the opportunity to side-step all adult responsibilities and indulge in juvenile antics
once more. In essence, Michael gets to literally become a man-child, one who can fart in his
boss’s face sans consequences.
Michael can also skip past anything that’s too emotionally challenging.
But by constantly fast-forwarding past his responsibilities, Michael ultimately misses
out on the most significant parts of his life, neglecting his children and wife until they
leave him. By the end, a tearful Michael has learned his lesson: --
- (Sandler/Michael) Family… comes… first.
- (Michael) Sandler’s films throughout the aughts consistently play out in this exact
same fashion: focusing on family men who yearn to return to their childhood… yet who ultimately
learn to embrace their familial responsibilities.
- (Woman) Life can be difficult sometimes. It gets bumpy - what with family and kids
and things not going exactly as you planned. But that’s what makes it interesting. In
life - the first act always exciting. The Second act -- that’s where the depth comes
in.”
- (Michael) Which brings us full circle to Uncut Gems, a film that shows the dark-side
of what happens when the man-child never quite grows up. Sandler brilliantly takes his trademark
comedic persona and applies it to a so-called ‘serious film.’ Howard has all the same
basic characteristics of Sandler’s previous man-child roles. Inferiority complex?
- (Sandler/Howard) Well Oscar’s f***ing wrong. I can go out and get six appraisers
right now, five of them would say at least three thousand dollars a karat.
- (Michael) Check!
A need for a maternal-ish figure to tell him everything’s gonna be okay -- even though
she’s at least 20 years younger than him? Oh, you betcha.
Prone to dangerous acts and sports? Now I’m just describing the whole movie. Howard constantly
puts his life on the line for a series of increasingly risky bets.
I mean, all you have to do is take one look at Howard’s bachelor pad to see what a man-child
he is: it’s a fifteen-year old’s dream come true, complete with Knicks memorabilia
and a portrait of a naked lady. This is rendered all the more pathetic given that Howard’s
in his 50s.
What’s more -- Howard constantly neglects his familial duties, his head always focused
on his latest scheme. Howard’s wife literally has to chastise him into tucking his son into
bed rather than watch a basketball game that he’s bet on.
- (Dinah) Howard, go say goodnight to your son.”
- (Michael) In the early ‘man-child’ films, Sandler could almost always rely on his family’s
support, no matter his antics. But in Uncut Gems, Howard is rendered all the more tragic
because NOBODY has his back. In fact -- his entire family turns against him.
- (Dinah) I think you’re the most annoying person I’ve ever met. I hate being with
you, I hate looking at you. And if I had my way – I would never see you again.
- (Michael) Howard’s daughter disdains him, and his son can barely look at him after discovering
he has a mistress:
- (Howard’s son) Who’s the girl living in your apartment?
- (Michael) And to add insult to injury -- it’s Howard’s own brother-in-law that’s hired
the goons threatening to kill him.
In a meta twist, it’s almost as if Howard’s family mirrors the harshest critiques leveled
against Sandler -- his wife is a stand in for all the critics who instinctively find
the comedian annoying on screen; whereas his children are a stand in for everyone who thinks
Sandler’s a disappointment for wasting his talents and slumming it in juvenile comedies.
Unlike Big Daddy and Click, where Sandler’s characters see the error of their ways and
eventually grow up, Howard never does. Two-thirds of the way through Uncut Gems, he finally
has a moment of clarity, lamenting to his girlfriend--
- (Sandler/Howard) I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do. Everything I do is not
going right. Everything I do is not going right. I don’t know what to do…
- (Michael) But Howard, unlike Michael or Sonny, never takes a moment to learn from
his mistakes; instead he doubles down on them, coming up with yet another get-rich-quick
scheme. And the results, well, speak for themselves.
Sandler’s career may have started out by glorifying the man-child, but as he’s grown,
his perception of the persona has apparently become far darker, culminating in Uncut Gems,
with the man-child’s literal death. It’s unnerving to think that all the juvenile antics,
baby-sotto voices and poop jokes have led to, well, tragedy. What was once labeled a
dumb archetype has morphed into a Shakesperean character flaw. Ultimately, it’s Howard’s
refusal to grow up, to change, to learn, to engage with any semblance of reality -- that
proves to be his undoing.
A character like Howard should be inherently unlikeable. Yet because Sandler has grown
up playing this character through his entire career, he’s able to inject Howard with
the pathos and affability only someone who knows the type like the back of his hand could.
This is the role that Sandler was born to play and the culmination of his man-child
persona. It’s almost too fitting that the Safide brothers spent years trying to convince
Sandler to take on the role - who else could have played it to such perfection?
So will Adam Sandler fulfill his destiny of starring in movies that aren’t terrible?
Well, maybe not so fast… In a recent interview, Sandler joked that if he didn’t get an Oscar
nomination for Uncut Gems, he would, to quote himself:
“…f***ing come back and do [a movie] again that is so bad on purpose just to make you
all pay. That’s how I get them.”
Perhaps proof the man-child never quite dies after all.
But what do you guys think? Does Uncut Gems mark peak Adam Sandler man-childhood? Where
does he even go from here? Let us know what you think in the comments. Big thanks to our
awesome patrons for supporting us. Hit that subscribe button, and as always, thanks for
watching. Later!