Get your own Free Home Page
One of my favorite quotes is from someone who said, “If millions of people believe a stupid thing, it is still a stupid thing.” So what does early 20th-century French novelist Anatole France have to do with Adam Sandler’s new movie, Big Daddy? Some folks, especially in the movie industry, accuse film critics of preferring to write bad stuff about movies because writing bad stuff about movies is more fun than writing good stuff about movies.
Gopher gravy. Turning readers on to worthwhile entertainment is the single most rewarding thing about this job. But when I see a theater full of parents bringing their kids to watch a charaacter who’s a shiftless, obnoxious jerk, whose most noticeable personality trait is volume, inflicting truly dangerous ideas about fatherhood on a helpless five-year-old, and then hear this supposed comedy did $41 million its first weekend, I break out in a cold sweat.
Sandler plays Sonny Koufax, who must be the luckiest male homo sapien on the planet. He works one day a week as a New York City toll booth attendant. He lives the rest of the time off investments made after winning $200,000 in a frivolous lawsuit. He never took the bar exam after graduation from law school, but his attorney friends still seek his gifted insight, so he gets all the legal profession’s ego boosts without any of its headaches. And when his girlfriend disapproves of his lifestyle, she leaves! What’s to complain about? But he’s stupid, too, so one day when his roommate’s (Jon Stewart) previously unknown love child shows up at the door, he who couldn’t keep a Chia pet alive appropriates the poor kid to win her back by proving he’s a responsible adult. Problem is, Sonny still has major issues with the lingering effects of his own father’s misguided views on childrearing, so he encourages this five-year-old boy — a real marketing department godsend who talks like Elmer Fudd and inspires an audible “awwww” from the audience — to do whatever he wants, wherever and whenever he feels like it. Which means, since the child is unknowingly trusting in a sociopath for guidance, the child learns that swearing, peeing in public, hocking up loogies, going to kindergarten with a colander on his head, not bathing, tripping rollerbladers, and eating 30 packets of ketchup for lunch are not only okay, but cute, desirable manifestations of adult indulgence. Eventually Sonny learns the error of his ways, and after a bizarre social services hearing that, with its cameo by Steve Buscemi as a homeless character witness, I still think must have been a dream sequence, gives the child back to the roommate. But not before so many urine and breast jokes that you’ve got to wonder if Big Daddy wasn’t sponsored by Depends and Hooters.
I’ve liked Sandler’s last few movies, which made no pretense of serious drama, but this was the most trying thing to sit through since Billy Madison. A misguided tract for dysfunctional parenting, which aims to be both PC and street-cred rude, it unfortunately shows why I don’t wear a timepiece to movies: since I use one of those backlit sports watches, when I started checking every minute or so to see how much longer I was going to have to sit still for such dreck, people in nearby seats would wonder if there was a miniature thunderstorm in the theater, or if maybe I was doing a little welding. F
Get your own Free Home Page