NICKY, BOBBY, SONNY, Archie, Louie, Robby, Happy, Billy . . . Adam Sandler knows how to protect the Everyman brand of his characters. Friendly guys with friendly names. For his new comedy
Mr Deeds, he has retained the ornate first name from the Capra original — Longfellow — but otherwise it is business as usual. Once again Sandler plays a plucky simpleton underdog who flies into a fist-swinging temper when pushed too far but is ultimately saved by the love of a nice girl.
Despite the funny voices, Sandler is not the Jerry Lewis of Generation X. Lewis was never so crude and he came with a metronomic shtick, that finger-clicking vaudeville discipline. He was old school. Sandler is no school. A pop culture photocopy of a photocopy. His heroes growing up were Cheech and Chong. He used to trail his father performing Rodney Dangerfield impressions. His own act is at times nothing more than infantile idiocy.
And yet he may get the last laugh from someone other than stoned teenagers. His recent change of pace in Paul Thomas Anderson’s serio-comic Punch-Drunk Love has revealed a discipline and sense of taste entirely lacking in Sandler’s comedies. And he has just wrapped Anger Management, working alongside Jack Nicholson, from which a clip of their scene crooning I Feel Pretty from West Side Story is much in demand in Hollywood.
Still, Sandler’s shaping achievement has been to sanitise and domesticate the poop joke for America. His puppy-dog simplicity makes him beloved by kids. And he is appealing, trustworthy and reticent. Press-shy, and shy-shy, the current king of body-function jokes is the embodiment of decency. It is a carefully nurtured persona. Sandler has either co-written or produced nearly all his films. He is known as “the king of tweak” for his attention to editing.
The critics have shaken their heads at his comedies, but Sandler knows how to connect with his audience. His comedies are box-office bonanzas. For Mr Deeds he received $20 million, plus a percentage of the gross.
Lorne Michaels, Sandler’s producer during his five years on Saturday Night Live in the early Nineties, says: “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.”
Apart from one mis-step, Sandler has perceptively consolidated his success with clever adjustments. After the overgrown schoolboy antics of his early films he made a more conventional romantic comedy, The Wedding Singer, in 1998, which introduced girls into his constituency. With Big Daddy he aimed for the family market and unveiled a more liberal approach. The anti-gay jokes which peppered his buddy comedy, Bulletproof, were replaced with a friendly gay couple.
His plots are often cosy, if not downright sappy. In Happy Gilmore his big incentive for winning a golf tournament is to save his sweet grandmother’s house. In Big Daddy he delivers a climactic courtroom speech to gain custody of his six-year-old son. The mis-step was Little Nicky, in which he played the dimwit son of Satan, dispatched to earth to fend for himself. Despite the familiar ingredients — the outcast underdog hero, the sweet girl, the gradually unleashed temper — the film was Sandler’s first flop because his standard uniform of sweatpants, jeans, sneakers and cropped hair was replaced with a Beelzebub Jr comb-over and an affected accent. He no longer looked the part of the regular guy, ie, his fans. This kinship with the audience is crucial. His problems need to mirror those of his fans, for Sandler is not a virtuoso or a stooge. He is the worm that turns, the little guy. Until his temper flares, he fights overbearing bullies armed only with playground wit. In Happy Gilmore, when the heavy tells him “I eat pieces of s*** like you for breakfast,” he replies, “You eat pieces of s*** for breakfast?!” In Big Daddy, when his ex boasts of her new middle-aged beau, “He has a five-year plan,” she gets the retort: “What is it? Don’t die?”
The persona first appeared in his stand-up act and comedy album which included songs full of wilfully clunky rhymes. “Love to eat the turkey at the table/ I once saw a movie with Betty Grable.” “What made a millionaire out of Mr. Frito-Lay/ Made a fat motherf***** outta me.” Tom Lehrer it’s not. But the clunky gags and the faintly amateurish delivery which so dismays the critics are integral to his appeal. Sandler takes every aspirant’s private hopelessness — the miming in front of the mirror — and reveals that he has the confidence to share it. The material fails, not him. A good example of this inclusive, open approach is when he interrupts a song to say, “That clappin’s messing my head up, man. I appreciate it. But I was trying to think of the next line and all I hear is clapping. Here we go . . . Thanks anyways.”
One can identify the self-contented glow of the treasured, indulged son. His home life looms large in his stand-up work and comedy albums. The title of They’re All Gonna Laugh at You! comes from his mother. What the Hell Happened to Me? features a family photograph of Sandler as a little boy. The set of one comedy tour was based on his parents’ back porch. His most recent album is called Stan and Judy’s Kid.
While many of his anecdotes revolve around early upsets — getting dumped by girlfriends, getting beaten up at school — his home life remains impregnably comfortable. Jim Carrey had to live in a tent his family were so poor, and one might say it shows. Sandler, for all his loon-outs and rages, grew up in middle-class New Hampshire and makes for a supremely serene underdog.
