12/11/15 — 12/14/15: A Complete Ranking Of The Happy Madison Films Slash Complete Nervous Breakdown.
( 5/11/16: I cannot speak to the coherence of this piece. I feel compelled to share it because in two weeks my complete ranking will be rendered incomplete by the release of The Do Over. This is also the only large project I finished during a very strange time and I think that’s worth something. Medium tells me it’s a 44 minute read. Sorry. Best of luck.)
I did it. I watched everything released by Happy Madison Productions. 38 movies in 13 days. I feel like the fish that gets put in a blender in Deuce Bigalow.
14 days ago I saw Pixels for the first time. I was amazed. The unrealistic contortions of the plot, the nonchalant sexism and racism, the gross out humor in lieu of actual jokes. Watching Pixels is like getting hit in the head with a shiny hammer.
After doing some research I rediscovered Happy Madison Productions, a name I remembered dimly from childhood. Adam Sandler founded the company in 1999 and set about making some of the most great and terrible movies of all time. Looking over Happy Madison’s releases I felt like a cop finally realizing a series of gruesome murders were all committed by the same killer. I had to watch them. I had to see what they were like.
Perhaps I’ve buried the lede but — I am not doing well. I’m unemployed. I watched 3 movies a day for 13 days, movies that by many accounts are unwatchable. I drank a lot. I aged 15–35 years. I cried during Joe Dirt. I cried during The House Bunny. I cried during every Kevin James movie. The past couple of weeks have either been a transcendent or a profoundly torturous experience. And now I’m going to rank all 38 movies in order from my least favorite to favorite and give a small justification for each. I’m not sure why.
38. The Shortcut (2009)
Oof. It was hard not to put Master Of Disguise here. I am particularly embarrassed at having to begin with The Shortcut because I was blacking out and remember little. The Shortcut, released straight to DVD under the imprint “Scary Madison,” is about a shortcut where something terrible happened years ago, now the shortcut is cursed, then some kids go there and something terrible happens.
I understand how hard it is to make a decent post-millennium slasher but that doesn’t absolve Shortcut of the fact that nothing happens. There’s dim lighting, there’s an old man — he’s the bad guy — we don’t see any blood. It’s the movie equivalent of a little boy walking around in a circle kicking dirt.
37. The Master Of Disguise (2002)
Master Of Disguise has the energy of bad children’s television. Scenes end before they’re over, characters make decisions for no reason. It’s a hyperbolic distillation of the problem with most HM movies.
Pistachio Disguisey is a bumbling waiter at his family’s restaurant. I use the word bumbling but what I mean is if you found yourself in an improv scene with him you would shoot yourself in the head . His parents are kidnapped by the evil Devlin Bowman (Brent Spiner), who forces his father to steal the world’s greatest treasures using his powers of disguise. Pistachio discovers his family are “Masters Of Disguise,” (which either means you have skinsuits of anyone you need to impersonate or that you wear offensive make up) and learns the art of disguise so he can rescue his parents. Those are the stakes. Always pay attention to the stakes. Rescue parents, save precious artifacts. Also somewhere along the way Jennifer Esposito falls in love with Pistachio.
What’s frightening about MOD is it would be better if the movie tried less. Take away Dana Carvey’s accent, the movie is already significantly improved. It’s baffling.
36. Strange Wilderness (2008)
Poor Steve Zahn. That might be all I have to say. Steve Zahn searches for Bigfoot in a harsh wilderness populated by neither likable characters nor jokes. I think he’s trying to save his TV show or follow in his father’s footsteps. Poor Steve Zahn.
35. Deuce Bigalow Male Gigolo (1999)
Here we go. DBMG was Happy Madison’s first release and in many ways it CREATED the HM formula.
Rob Schneider plays a loser with a heart of gold who gets fired from the aquarium — I think he’s naked in a tank and children see him? He gets a job cleaning the fishtank of a man who turns out to be a Gigolo, and who eventually enlists Schneider to take care of his exotic fish while he goes away on business.
So Deuce is living in the Gigolo’s house and while doing something genuinely funny he knocks over the fishtank, destroying the apartment but saving the fish. There’s a great shot of the fish in different containers all over the room. Replacing the fishtank turns out to cost $6,000 dollars.
Those are the stakes of the movie. $6,000.
Eddie Griffin shows up. Deuce becomes a Gigolo. Here’s where the movie loses me.
I remember being 9 and there was this thing called the “Sex Comedy.” It was an R rated comedy with a sexually charged concept and gratuitous female nudity. When I was 9 I wanted to participate in this element of mainstream male culture. All the other boys in 4th grade had seen the breasts and laughed at the term “Mangina,” and I wanted to as well.
I am no longer so gung ho about the Sex Comedy.
While I don’t believe there’s anything inherently offensive in the premise “schlub fishsits for Gigolo, destroys fishtank, must become Gigolo to make the money back,” the way it is executed depresses me.
The comedic backbone of the movie is that, because Deuce is starting out, all his clients have what the assumed viewer is expected to define as, “something wrong” with them. One woman is obese, another has Tourette’s syndrome, another is over 7 feet tall.
Deuce avoids having sex with all of these women, instead satisfying them in wholesome ways that double as exploitative punchlines.
At the end of the movie Deuce gets put on trial for Gigolo-ing. Most HM films end with a trial or sporting event. All of Deuce’s clients take the stand and testify Deuce never slept with them, he made them feel comfortable with who they are. Another classic Happy Madison trope is being offensive while patting yourself on the back for being empowering. The charge is dropped. Deuce’s girlfriend, who turned her back on him when she found out he was a Gigolo, forgives him and they get married.
Oh, and the fishtank gets replaced. I know you were all clamoring to find out how those stakes got resolved.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe this should be ranked higher.
34. You Don’t Mess With The Zohan (2008)
You get the feeling a lot of HM movies would have benefitted if more people were allowed to say no to Sandler. There would be a lot less fucking basketball, I’ll tell you that.
So Zohan is a deadly Israeli commando who wants to cut and style hair for a thin reason.
Zohan fakes his own death, conceals his identity, and heads to New York, where he comes upon a street one side of which consists of Israeli owned businesses and the other Palestinian owned businesses. He takes a job sweeping up hair in a Palestinian owned barbershop where he is eventually given his chance to be a stylist. Then if I’m understanding correctly he makes the barbershop wildly popular by having sex with older women while cutting their hair. Unfortunately one day his giant penis can’t get hard and he realizes he’s fallen in love with the owner of the barbershop which is of course a conflict because she’s Palestinian and he’s a notorious Israeli commando.
That’s the HUGE problem with this movie. It directly addresses the Israel/Palestine situation, a very serious and continuing issue, and treats it with absurd ham fisted insensitivity. Just like Deuce — movie thinks it is doing good — is not.
It turns out a group of evil American developers have been pitting the Israelis and Palestinians against one another to steal their block and build a giant mall, and Zohan and his nemesis John Turturro (Palestinian terrorist turned falafel restaurant owner, great work everyone) work together to stop them, but then John Turturro accidentally blows the block up anyway, which destroys the agreed upon stakes. No thank you.
33. The Animal (2001)
My father took me to see The Animal in theaters. I can’t remember if I asked him to.
Rob Schneider is a loser, he gets into an accident, a mad scientist heals him with animal parts and now he’s superhuman but he can’t control his animal instincts. People don’t give Rob Schneider enough credit. It’s easy to talk shit but without The Animal there would be no Click, or Zookeeper. Which…would be bad.
The thing I remember most vividly about The Animal is the Tiger Milk. Early in the movie Schneider sees a commercial for a supplement called Tiger Milk which promises to build muscle. He orders and it comes in a cardboard carton. He squeezes this chalky white glop into a glass. Then he drinks it.
32. Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star (2011)
Watching Bucky Larson is like not watching Bucky Larson but with sounds and light. I’d say poor Nick Swardson but I feel no sympathy for Swardson. He put those fake teeth in every morning for shooting and knew what he was doing.
What’s interesting about Bucky Larson is the feeling of watching a movie bomb. It’s like at any moment Swardson could look into the camera and scream IS THIS THING ON?
I keep coming back to stakes with Happy Madison. What are the stakes in Bucky Larson? He wants to be a porn star because he finds out his parents were porn stars? He likes Christina Ricci? Don Johnson tells her to go away? They reunite? That’s not conflict. Those aren’t stakes.
31. Deuce Bigalow European Gigolo (2005)
One of the first things we learn in DBEG is the woman Deuce married at the end of the first film was eaten by sharks on their honeymoon and it was definitely his fault (we have to watch this happen via flashback). Deuce skips town to stay with Eddie Griffin in Amsterdam, and the story becomes a whodunit in which Deuce is trying to catch a killer murdering Europe’s greatest “man-whores.”
As in Zohan the climax involves a battle to stop the bad guy from blowing something up but as soon as the bad guy is neutralized Deuce accidentally sets off the detonator, which is the kind of shit that starts to makes an audience feel abused.
The Deuce Bigalow movies are about a “genuinely good guy,” which is a notable trait of Schneider films. Sandler always wants to play a badass but Rob Schneider’s characters are always good dudes.
30. The Longest Yard (2005)
I’m happy to be talking about the Longest Yard after DBEG because it underscores Sandler’s obsession with creating unlikable characters and expecting you to be on their side. All the character needs is to get sent to jail and forced into playing a football game. He could go to jail for tax fraud, or a technicality. He goes to jail because the FIRST THING HE DOES IN THE MOVIE is lock his girlfriend in a closet and crash her car during a drunken joyride.
Fuck that guy! And his girlfriend is Courtney Cox, all her talent was wasted on one scene where she gets locked in a closet.
The Longest Yard should have been about Courtney Cox having to step in as head coach of a professional football team after her scumbag boyfriend goes to jail.
Sandler goes to jail and learns not to be an asshole, JUST KIDDING HE BEATS THE GUARDS AT FOOTBALL. And everyone gets to enjoy some sweet prison rape jokes.
I blacked out. I’m assuming the prisoners win. I wonder if Courtney Cox is in a bookend scene. She better not take Sandler back.
29. Anger Management (2003)
Anger Management is a disaster. Every online summary of Anger Management claims Sandler starts out unable to express himself and through his relationship with Nicholson he learns to process anger healthily. None of that is in the movie. He goes from a guy to still a guy. Along the way Nicholson sadistically tortures him.
The inciting incident occurs on a plane. Nicholson, Sandler’s seatmate, is being insufferable and Sandler grows more and more frustrated, eventually escalating the situation so much that a security officer appears and Sandler is tazed.
This was a big thing in movies just after 9/11. People were always making scenes on planes — there’s a scene like this in Meet The Parents. It’s an interesting cultural phenomenon.
What are the stakes? His job and his relationship? But Nicholson’s appearance in Sandler’s life is what sets all his problems in motion to begin with.
There’s a lot of yelling in this era of Sandler. He was very angry in his 30’s. He screams a great deal in Anger Management.
28. Mr Deeds (2002)
I can’t say whether Mr Deeds or Anger Management is worse. Happy Madison is at its best when firing on all cylinders of absurdity. Magic remote that controls the universe. Son of Satan needs to save the world. The concept for Deeds is: Guy gets rich but doesn’t like it?
The executors of this dead rich dude’s estate discover he has a long lost relative who is technically the heir to a massive fortune so they travel to New Hampshire where Longfellow Deeds owns a pizza place and is a local hero for his greeting card slogans that he sends to Hallmark in the hopes that one day they will publish him. The greeting card thing is fucking unforgivable.
I think this is the first Happy Madison film in which the female lead is — if not well written — at least fleshed out. She does things for reasons, she feels things in response to events. She’s Winona Ryder for Christ’s sake.
Winona Ryder is the bright spot in the movie. The best scene in the film is when Deeds tracks down her alleged hometown.
So Deeds is a multibillionaire who everyone wants a piece of, and Winona Ryder is a tabloid journalist who pretends to be his girlfriend but eventually duh falls in love with him. In an early scene Deeds asks her where she’s from and she makes up the name “Winchestertonville Iowa.” But ever the romantic, Deeds flies her to the real Winchestertonville Iowa as a surprise. Winona has to walk around pretending to be nostalgic about everything.
But what are the stakes? The evil corporate guys need Deeds’ shares of stock. He and Winona love each other but when he finds out she’s a reporter he feels betrayed. Then there’s a courtroom scene (classic) in which it turns out the true heir is the butler played by John Turturro. Deeds and Winona Ryder move back to New Hampshire to run the pizza place and Deeds keeps writing his stupid greeting cards. The worst.
27. The Ridiculous Six (2015)
It’s confusing that Ridiculous Six happened.
It came out yesterday (12/11) so I can’t definitively say how offensive Ridiculous Six is. It’s quite offensive. But — you know what the stakes are? An amount of money! Deuce Bigalow, 1999, $6,000. Ridiculous Six, 2015, $50,000! We are still watching the same movie!
Where to begin. Describing it makes me uncomfortable.
Adam Sandler plays “White Knife,” a white orphan raised by Apaches, who is days away from marrying his fiancee “Smoking Fox” when a man shows up claiming to be his father. The father says he’s a gangster with a secret stash of loot he wants to give White Knife, but then another gangster shows up and insists the father lead him to the loot. White Knife sets off to raise money to free his father by robbing people who “deserve to be robbed.”
Enter Rob Schneider, wearing brownface, playing an ethnicity of which he is not a member, which is kind of his “thing.”
Ridiculous Six is such a quintessential Happy Madison film it’s staggering to see in this supposed age of “PC culture.” As a liberal millennial these movies seem almost anachronistic but I guess this is what mainstream cinema looks like? The political opinions of my friends range from “Hillary Clinton is more hawkish than I’d like” to “America and capitalism are systems of patriarchal white supremacy.” Not too many Sandler fans in those demos.
26. Jack And Jill (2011)
Jack and Jill is regarded by some as one of the worst films of all time. The premise of the film is “HORRIBLE WOMAN!” and Sandler in drag plays said Horrible Woman. When I was growing up my mother told me dressing in drag specifically for a laugh was the most woman hating thing a man could do.
I don’t dispute that. However, it’s not the worst Happy Madison film by a long shot.
In this universe Adam Sandler (Jack) is an advertising executive tasked with convincing Al Pacino to appear in a Dunkin Donuts commercial. At the same time Jack’s sister Jill is visiting, and on a chance meeting Pacino falls for her, which viewers are expected to find hilarious.
Pacino is why the movie is worthwhile. Al Pacino is doing Shakespeare on broadway. Every day he is more disillusioned with the disrespect audiences show for live theater. He meets Jill and finally has, for lack of a better phrase, a reason to live. Pacino brings energy and commitment to his affection for Jill.
The best scene occurs when an anxious Pacino answers the phone onstage during a show and has an entire conversation with Jack about his desire to meet with Jill while also telling the audience to fuck off
You know what else happens in this movie that makes it better than other HM ventures? A character grows. Jack dresses up like Jill and goes on a date with Pacino to secure the Dunkin Donuts commercial but after Jill discovers what he’s doing he realizes the error of his ways and makes amends and no it’s not perfect, it’s a goddamn Adam Sandler movie but it’s better than going from a douche who writes shitty Hallmark cards to a rich douche who writes shitty Hallmark cards.
I also gave Jack and Jill as many extra points as possible for some great shots of people having fun on a cruise ship.
25. Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
Eight Crazy Nights. 76 minutes. Somehow too long.
What amazes me is if this were a regular movie it could get away with being an hour forty and I’d cry. I cried during the movie as is, I’m just saying the fact that it’s an animated musical completely destroys it.
On the one hand what you have is a rare Sandler character who makes sense. He was a high school basketball star (here we go with the basketball) whose parents died in a car crash on their way to his championship game. He withdrew into himself, became an alcoholic ne’er do well, and twenty years later finds himself at risk of being given a long prison sentence for yet another drunken disturbance when a kindly old man offers to reform him. Great story.
But the songs, oh the songs! Who wrote them? Why are they? Are they an attempt to sound like jewish interpretations of the classic christmas song aesthetic? Filled of course with poop jokes?
The animation exacerbates HM’s crassness problem. The movie only occasionally remembers it’s animated and feels compelled to justify this by doing something you couldn’t do in a live action picture, but it can only hurt. In one scene Sandler’s character shoves the old man into a porta potty and kicks it down a hill. The old man emerges covered in shit, at which point Sandler sprays him with a hose, turning him into a shit and ice sculpture, then leaves him overnight, where a group of friendly deer free him by licking the ice and shit off of his body. One deer looks into the camera and smiles a big toothy shitty smile.
The animation does yield possibly my favorite joke in any HM movie. Sandler’s character has hit rock bottom, he’s had his holiday revelation, and he returns to town despite the fact that he’s wanted by the police because he needs to apologize to the old man. The old man is anxiously awaiting the announcement of a meaningless holiday award he’s coveted for thirty years, and Sandler is watching outside through a window of the town hall with the old man’s deer friends.
Suddenly a cop comes around the corner and shines his flashlight at the window, where the deer are now standing on each other to form a pyramid obscuring Sandler from view. We hear another cop go, “you see anything back there?” And the first cop goes, “Nah, just some deer making a pyramid.”
Excellent joke.
24. I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry (2007)
CW: I quote Sandler’s use of a homophobic slur in this section.
Somewhere in one of the infinite alternate dimensions around us, worlds that could have been ours but for one tiny difference, Earth 1178, or Earth 334 — there is a universe in which I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry is a really smart comedy about LGBTQ issues.
Here on Earth 42 (I assume we’re not Earth 1 that would be narcissistic) we have the movie we have.
As with most HM movies there are two sides to Chuck and Larry. There’s the movie that traffics in jokes at the expense of the very concept of homosexuality, a movie with an extended “drop the soap” scene, in which at the first mention of Domestic Partnership Adam Sandler exclaims, “Domestic Partnership — you mean like Faggots?”
Fuck that movie.
But — somewhere under all the offensive jokes and stereotyping there is a sweet best friendship that it’s kind of hard for me not to enjoy. I find it adorable that Chuck agrees to move in with Larry and the two of them share a bed, I love that in their quest to seem like a believable couple what emerges is that despite not being romantically involved the two of them are really fucking in love. In the final courtroom scene (obviously) Chuck and Larry are interviewed and reveal themselves to have a deeply intimate understanding of and care for one another.
There’s also the petition. After learning Chuck and Larry are a couple, their fellow firemen circulate a petition to get them transferred. Incensed, Larry confronts them and reads their names off the petition, reminding each guy of a time Chuck saved his life or otherwise helped him out. He shames them for turning on their friend just because they’ve learned he’s gay. From my perspective it’s an effective scene.
One more thing! Jessica Biel plays Sandler’s love interest (I know) and for most of the movie she thinks he’s gay so obviously there’s a HILARIOUS scene in which she strips in front of him. She and Sandler get into an argument about whether her boobs are real and she insists he touch and squeeze them to verify.
That NEVER HAPPENS, correct? I feel like such an idiot asking this question but like, are gay men going through life with women occasionally insisting they feel their breasts? The answer has to be no, that makes no sense.
Feel my breasts, gay man!
23. The Benchwarmers (2006)
Another movie in which Rob Schneider plays an incredibly decent human being. It’s not hard Sandler.
Benchwarmers isn’t a great movie and doesn’t aspire to be. Rob Schneider, David Spade, and Jon Heder form a baseball team called the Benchwarmers and play against little league teams to give hope to kids who are bullied by jocks just like they were growing up. That’s perfectly fine with me. It’s a classic Happy Madison story, people get farted on, kids get injured by adults, everybody leaves happy.
22. Joe Dirt (2001)
Joe Dirt and I are buddies. He’s a loser. He’s not a loser and a badass — there’s no such thing.
Joe Dirt is a pathetic janitor at a radio station and Dennis Miller, playing essentially his asshole self, invites Joe into the booth to ridicule him. Joe proceeds to weave a compelling heartbreaking and obviously very crass tale about the love of his life Brandi and how Kid Rock ran him out of town, how his parents abandoned him as a child at the grand canyon and his hair is somehow part of his brain. He wins the respect of Dennis Miller and the hearts of listeners everywhere. I believe Kid Rock gets his comeuppance and Brandi reunites with Joe Dirt.
I genuinely enjoyed this movie but can’t remember a single joke other than the dog with the stuck nuts. That’s how Joe and Brandi meet — her dog’s nuts are stuck to the porch, and I don’t know what the fake nuts are made of but they look just about as realistic as massively distended fake nuts can look. Onwards!
21. Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser (2015)
I was pretty burned out by Joe Dirt 2 and the first hour is unwatchable. Joe Dirt hits his head and wakes up in the 60’s where he invents redneck culture and helps Lynrd Skynrd choose their name. So boring, so without stakes or direction, and the fact that every ten minutes I had to watch a three minute commercial break does not make me optimistic about the future of Crackle.
However. At the 2/3 mark of the film it becomes clear we are watching a Joe Dirtified version of It’s A Wonderful Life, and the lesson he needs to learn is it doesn’t matter that he’s a loser, his wife and daughters love him for who he is (oh sorry in the first few minutes his wife and daughters witness all these loggers farting on him and he worries they’ve lost respect for him). He sees that a world without Joe Dirt is a worse world for everyone Joe Dirt loves. So yeah. I ranked it one slot above Joe Dirt one. That’s a decision I made.
I was a big fan of the scene in this movie where Joe Dirt accidentally flushes his nuts down an airplane toilet. I didn’t even realize it was a callback to the dog with his nuts frozen to the porch until I wrote this.
20. Pixels (2015)
When we talk about “High Concept” being Happy Madison’s wheelhouse this is what we’re talking about.
You know how Bucky Larson can tell it’s bombing? Pixels is 1000% CERTAIN that it is killing. Even during that early scene with Adam Sandler and Michelle Monaghan drinking wine in the closet you can almost see the screenwriters high fiving over a laptop.
As HM films go this movie is where it is on the list, towards the top of the bottom half. Kevin James is a delight. We’ll soon be getting into some Kevin James films and it’s going to be hard for me not to just say for every one that I could watch Kevin James serve jury duty and feel I’d gotten my $13.50’s worth.
I cannot stand the romantic subplot if subplot it can be called. I am so sick of watching women walk up to Adam Sandler and go “It’s the end of the movie, I belong to you now!”
Also Peter Dinklage isn’t funny in Pixels but Josh Gad (kind of) is. Kind of.
19. 50 First Dates (2004)
50 First Dates thinks it’s a sweet romantic comedy and is one of the most terrifying exercises of cinema produced by human hand.
Adam Sandler is an aquatic veterinarian in Hawaii who has flings with vacationing women he never tells his real name because he’s afraid of commitment.
Then one day he meets Drew Barrymore at a diner, the two have a super connected breakfast, and they make plans to meet the next day. When Sandler returns to the diner and approaches Drew Barrymore she appears not to remember him. The proprietor takes Sandler aside and informs him that several years ago Barrymore was in a car crash and suffered brain injury resulting in a memory disorder. Her life is frozen just before her accident, and every day she wakes up thinking it is the morning of the crash, also tragically her father’s birthday. Everyone with whom she comes into contact perpetuates this misconception.
There’s a positively harrowing sequence in the first half of the movie where Drew Barrymore’s father celebrates his Birthday with his daughter and then they watch a football game that the father and brother (Sean Astin!) have watched EVERY DAY FOR YEARS, and they all have to act surprised when the Vikings win. Barrymore shows the father all the beautiful artwork she painted on the walls of his “new” studio. Then she goes to bed.
The father and brother scrape most of a cake into the garbage and express displeasure at the fact that they have to eat cake every single day. They open a closet and pick up a newspaper from a seemingly infinite pile of newspapers all from the same day. Next they set about completely painting over all the beautiful artwork in the father’s studio until the room is blank white again. Does that not make your skin crawl?
Sandler’s best friend (Rob Schneider in brown face playing a race of which he is not a member) thinks this is great. Sandler hates commitment, he can sleep with this girl and she won’t even know he exists the next day. But Sandler actually wants to get to know her, even after her father and brother try to scare him off with threats. First he tries every day to get her to chat with him at the diner with mixed results. Some mornings she buys his opening line and some mornings she shuts him down. Then he moves on to stalking her, creating different situations and diversions along the route he knows she’s be driving so that he has excuses to interact with her. Each time he learns something about her he uses this information the next time he meets her to endear himself to her more quickly.
Not okay. None of what he’s doing is okay. But continue, movie.
Eventually the father decides to allow Sandler to be a part of Barrymore’s life (lots of female agency in this movie about a woman who knows fundamentally nothing about reality) because apparently on days that she sees him she comes home and sings while she paints. He must really make her happy with his stalking.
This is how it ends. This is the “HAPPY ENDING” of 50 First Dates. Sandler compiles a video tape that presumably grows and changes from year to year, which Drew Barrymore has to watch each morning right after she wakes up. The tape essentially “catches her up” on the fact that she was in a car crash, that she has no memory, it’s years later than she thinks it is, then it informs her that she’s in love with Adam Sandler, it shows footage of their wedding day and the births of their children. The video ends, she goes outside and she’s on Adam Sandler’s boat in fucking Alaska.
ARE YOU SERIOUS? THAT’S TERRIFYING. EVERY MORNING SHE WAKES UP AND WATCHES A VIDEO INSISTING ON ONE SPECIFIC INTERPRETATION OF FOUR YEARS OF HER LIFE AND THAT SHE TRUST A RANDOM GUY, AND OH BY THE WAY THESE TWO LITTLE BLONDE GIRLS ARE YOUR CHILDREN, ENJOY ALASKA DREW BARRYMORE, I SWEAR AT SOME POINT YOU CONSENTED TO BEING BROUGHT HERE!
Also at one point in this movie a walrus throws up on a woman and then Adam Sandler congratulates the walrus.
18. That’s My Boy (2012)
I quite enjoyed That’s My Boy. It’s refreshing to see a Sandler movie where you’re supposed to hate him. He cranks up the Bahston in his persona to positive effect. Not entirely sure why I enjoyed it so much. The premise is a bummer. When Sandler is 13 (one of the worst HM tendencies is the unnecessary flashback) one of his teachers seduces him and they have a baby. Thirty years later he’s a loser with an overachieving 30 year old son who hates him. Somehow Sandler weasels his way into being invited to his son’s wedding and unless I’m mistaken helps the son realize that his fiancee is evil? Again, blacked out.
17. Just Go With It (2011)
Just Go With It is the prototype for Blended, which is an AMAZING movie. Unfortunately Just Go With It hasn’t gotten the levels right yet. First of all it starts with an unnecessary flashback. Second, the premise, if you can call it that, is prohibitively convoluted, let’s see if I can explain it.
Adam Sandler uses a wedding ring as a prop to pick up women in bars. So again — why are we on this guy’s side? But fine. Then one night at a party he meets a girl named Palmer with whom he as a real connection and who is also 21 years younger than him. They sleep together when he isn’t wearing the wedding ring but the next morning she finds it, thinks she’s slept with a married man, and because Sandler wants to date her but can’t tell her the truth (I am scum) he claims to be in the midst of a divorce. For some reason Palmer insists on meeting his soon to be ex wife. God this is exhausting.
Sandler enlists his best friend Jennifer Aniston who is also his coworker and a single mom, to pretend she’s the ex and Aniston names the fake ex after her nemesis from college. “Devlin.” Brunch with Palmer and “Devlin” goes fine until Aniston lets slip that she has kids, of whom Palmer assumes Sandler to be the father.
They bribe Aniston’s kids to pretend Sandler is their father, but the kids blackmail Sandler into taking everyone on vacation to Jamaica.
So the main conflict is Sandler needs to convince Palmer he’s a good father during the trip so that she’ll like him and when they get back to America he’s going to kill off his fake family so he won’t have to keep lying.
I can’t believe I’m still explaining this.
In an effort to seem like a good father Sandler starts being a good father to Aniston’s kids, which of course shows Aniston a side of him she’s never seen before. He teaches her son to swim, which is the big scene where she gets that gleam in her eye of inexplicably deciding she likes Adam Sandler.
Now because at this point in the movie there’s definitely still not enough going on, the real “Devlin” shows up, Jennifer Aniston’s nemesis from college, played by Nicole Kidman. This development yields a bunch of mishaps and close calls that are complicated and not fun.
Do you care? What the fuck am I doing? Is this just a series of plot summaries? I thought I’d be making profound observations about these movies, or at least that I’d retain more specific memories of the poop jokes. Oh I’ve got one! Nope that’s from Blended.
16. Bedtime Stories (2008)
I’m a sucker for any kids movie that doesn’t treat kids like complete idiots, and Bedtime Stories is a super creative premise. Holy shit this starts with a flashback too! And clunky narration!
Adam Sandler’s Dad founded a hotel and had to sell it to an evil businessman who promised to make Sandler manager someday but years later he’s still the handyman. During a crucial week at work Sandler is forced to care for his sister’s two young children while she pursues job offers in another state. He’s irritated by the kids insistence on being told bedtime stories until he notices elements of the bedtime stories coming true in his real life the next day. At first he tries to shoehorn obviously self serving elements into the stories until he realizes the only parts of the bedtime stories that come true are those suggested by the children. He begins trying to coach the kids to tell boring stories about him becoming rich as the manager of the hotel, but the kids rebel, which I love. Kids don’t just want a happy ending, they want their stories to be fun and unpredictable and this movie hits that nail right on the head.
It’s great. Sandler will be telling a story about kissing a fair maiden and the little boy will completely ruin the moment. But what’s also fun is how the magic in the stories translates into reality. Sandler first realizes the stories are coming true when he’s out on the freeway and it starts raining gumballs, just like in his story from the previous night. The camera then pans up and we see a candy truck has crashed on a bridge above the freeway and its cargo is pouring over the edge. In one scene Adam Sandler has finally coached the kids into helping him get his dream job when the little girl abruptly kills the Sandler character with a fireball. The next day at work Sandler is so terrified he’s going to be set aflame that he causes a massive disturbance and gets fired. Get it? I like it!
The end of the story is pretty inspiring, the storyline of Sandler and Kerri Russel starting to like each other is borderline believable especially if you factor in the magic forces at work, and Rob Schneider only appears in brownface playing a race of which he is not a member for about thirty seconds. What more could you ask for from a Happy Madison movie?
On the record? This is better than Night At The Museum. Sorry haters.
15. Here Comes The Boom (2012)
Thank god we’re through the hairier Sandler premises and I can breathe a fresh gulp of Kevin James.
Kevin James is a teacher who decides to raise money to prevent his school from having to cut their music program by becoming an MMA fighter.
NOW THAT’S A FUCKING PREMISE. SEE HOW IT TOOK ONE SENTENCE? TAKE NOTES SANDLER.
Henry Winkler and Kevin James are my kind of comedy duo. Salma Hayek plays the school nurse and she spends the whole movie turning Kevin James down until the final scene where she kisses him through the mesh of the MMA ring which I like, I hate it when these movies end with marriage or something absurd like that. I believe one kiss. It’s also noncommittal. It’s like hey man, good job, maybe we will get that dinner sometime.
Here Comes The Boom is literally named after a lyric from a song called “Boom,” by the band P.O.D. which was released ten years before the movie.
This movie is also way more violent than I thought it would be. I assumed it was a Kevin James vehicle and thus mostly for children but he gets the absolute shit kicked out of him on many occasions in graphic fashion. I’m actually surprised there’s no stereotypical Doctor scene where he’s informed one more fight could kill him.
God I love Kevin James. Kevin James could never exist without Rob Schneider though.
Lotta fat jokes in this movie. Lotta fat jokes in every Kevin James movie but in this one it’s particularly dissonant because he’s clearly in good shape. I think part of why we tolerate so many fat jokes at the expense of Kevin James even in the post 2010 era is that we know he’s genuinely a good looking dude.
The more I write about Kevin James the more it seems like I want to fuck Kevin James. I’m pretty sure I don’t. Not 100% but pretty sure. I think I want Kevin James to be my dad.
14. Zookeeper (2011)
Kevin James is a socially awkward Zookeeper and he’s so good to the animals that they decide to reveal they can speak in an attempt to help him out.
God, what’s happened to me. I’m a shell of my former self. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just drunk, maybe I’m in love with Kevin James. This movie is great. The scene where he takes the Gorilla to TGIFridays is poetry.
I’m sorry. It’s late. I’ve been writing almost continuously for two days. I don’t remember what’s so great about Zookeeper. I apparently remember that it’s my #14 of 38 movies. I’m so scared. I have no idea what’s going to happen to me. I don’t remember what the stakes of Zookeeper are, nor do I remember the outcome. Everything is so fucked up.
13. Grown Ups (2010)
I really like Grown ups. It feels like Adam Sandler finally growing up.
Let’s start with a flashback shall we? Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider, and Kevin James are all 13 years old and they win the middle school basketball championship on a call that the other team claims is spurious. Basketball. I wish we had just let Sandler play basketball instead of making movies.
30 years later their coach dies and the friends reunite as his funeral. God, where to even begin with this movie.
Adam Sandler is a highly paid agent in LA, Chris Rock is a sensitive stay at home dad, David Spade is a committed bachelor who still gets wasted and has casual sex despite being forty something, and Rob Schneider is as usual a genuinely great dude, but his gag for this film is that his wife is at least three decades older than he is. Flashes of Deuce.
I have to confess something to you — I am not a critic. I am just a man. A Comedy Man. A Clown. A Dirty Piece Of Shit Clown.
What I’m saying is it’s possible these rankings mean nothing.
Grown Ups has no conflict whatsoever. The four dudes get along, they play jokes on each other, they alternately complain about and love their wives (Salma Hayek, Maya Rudolph, and two actresses whose names I don’t know — portrayed for the most part as controlling dragon ladies). You watch them eat dinner, you watch them play basketball with their kids, you watch them cozy up by the fire at night, there is no movie here, it’s just an enjoyable family vacation which I am FINE with.
I am one hundred percent entertained by the waterpark scene even though none of the jokes are funny. I totally enjoyed watching the guys play “arrow roulette,” where they fire an arrow directly into the air and see who can go the longest without running away (it’s Schneider, he gets an arrow in the foot). The jokes are still dumb and gross and often offensive but the edges have rounded out a bit, this feels like a new level of dare I say it maturity in the Happy Madison canon.
Everyone in the film is basically decent to everyone else, there’s no weird lying or arbitrary sum of money to collect. The closest thing to stakes are that Colin Quinn shows up as a player on the losing team from 30 years ago and challenges the Grown Ups to a rematch.
Here’s where Grown Ups really seals the deal for me. Sandler is perfectly capable of scoring the game winning basket when he realizes this means so much more to Colin Quinn than it does to him— so he throws the game and is quite gracious to Colin Quinn and then everyone has a lovely cookout and watches fireworks. I wish I had a family like this growing up. Maybe I wouldn’t be writing about Happy Madison.
12. Grown Ups 2 (2013)
Oh yes I did rank Grown ups 2 one slot above Grown Ups, because the two films are exactly the same in tone lack of conflict and adorable middle aged man vibes but a TEENY bit more fun stuff happens in Grown Ups 2.
OK we gotta talk about the elephant in the room and then I’ll tell you about the fun stuff. Rob Schneider has DISAPPEARED.
Rob Schneider is in Grown Ups 1. He’s one of the Grown Ups. In Grown Ups 2 everyone has moved back to their hometown but Rob Schneider isn’t there and nobody mentions him. This is a production company that killed Deuce Bigalow’s wife by shark attack on their honeymoon and showed it but they can’t give Schneider the dignity of one line where he gets a job in Florida or something?
On to the fun stuff. The day begins with Sandler being called upon to drive his kids’ school bus as a favor to the troubled bus driver, picking up Chris Rock, David Spade, and Kevin James along the way. Fun. They go to a quarry where they used to hang out as kids and a bunch of college bros show up, insisting this is their turf. The college bros force the Grown Ups to jump naked over the cliff into the water and Kevin James lands on David Spade’s face. Fun. David Spade has a long lost son in this movie who is like seven feet tall and completely psychotic. He takes revenge on the college bros by trashing their frat house and in retaliation the college bros attack the 80’s themed party that Sandler and Salma Hayek are throwing that night (already an extremely fun scene — middle aged people enjoying nostalgia) and the Grown Ups FIGHT THE COLLEGE KIDS!
Fun.
11. Grandma’s Boy (2006)
This movie blew my expectations away. I thought it would be bottom of the barrel unwatchable and I’d even rewatch it, which I can’t say for many of these.
I like Alan Covert. Even if you don’t know his name you know his face because he’s in every single one of these movies. I’m glad they gave him his own movie and I wish he’d starred in more. Maybe Grandma’s Boy wasn’t as successful as it needed to be.
The inciting incident is dumb but once Alan Covert is living with his Grandmother this is a decent movie.
Alan Covert works as a video game tester and it’s crunch time in the development of a new game. The “stoner living in a house full of nice old ladies” angle is done well. Covert’s boss Samantha grows closer to him for no particular reason but she’s vastly better written than most female characters in these movies. She’s cool, you like her as a person, and at the end of the movie, much like with Boom, her getting together with Alan Covert is more like “now we’re dating!” than “Now we’re in love forever!”
The grandmother and her friends are great, the tone of the movie is great, the movie climaxes with a fun party — it’s great! And yes — unforgivably racist sexist and homophobic.
10. Funny People (2009)
I did not love Funny People. Funny People is as high as it is on the list because it’s technically a good movie.
First of all, not to be a bitter comedian, but where the fuck is all this stage time coming from? Seth Rogen’s supposedly a bad comedian — how is he always performing to real crowds? We never see Rogen go to an open mic, we never see him talk to a booker, stage time just falls from the fucking sky in this universe? Sorry.
So I really like the Sandler/Rogen relationship, it’s interesting to see what appears to be the dream of a lifetime turn into a nightmare, I think Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman are funny and I’m on board for the first half. I’ve been informed I have the same problem most people who dislike the film have which is I like the movie until he finds out he’s going to live and then there still another hour and twenty minutes of movie.
Which is not to say I don’t find the stuff with Leslie Mann and the complicated breakdown of the Sandler/Rogen friendship compelling and heartbreaking, it just feels like a different movie from the first half.
The other crime for which I will never forgive Funny People is the creation and dissemination of the “Randy” character who for a brief period threatened to subsume Aziz Ansari’s entire stage persona. Thank god he exorcised Randy.
9. The Hot Chick (2002)
Though appearing to be exactly like every other Happy Madison movie the Hot Chick is a complete anomaly. Usually you have a cool premise executed terribly. The Hot Chick is a bad premise executed quite well.
Rachel McAdams steals a pair of magical earnings from an African artifacts store in a mall. Rob Schneider is a petty crook who, when Rachel McAdams loses one of the earrings, picks it up with the intention to sell it. That night they each try on their earring and when they wake up they’ve switched bodies.
Sure. Everything up to this point has been terrible.
But from the moment Rachel McAdams and Rob Schneider wake up in each other’s bodies I believe every decision they make. I believe Schneider, an unattached career criminal would — after the initial shock — view having a young beautiful female body as an asset and try to take advantage via whatever opportunity presents itself. I believe Rachel McAdams would go to her best friend and not her family for help.
Anna Faris gives an incredible performance as the best friend. I believe the first thing she would do is ask to see Rachel McAdam’s penis. I also believe Anna Faris falling in love with Rachel McAdams and asking her to remain a man. That’s an incredibly sweet scene and Rachel McAdams having to say no is super powerful.
That’s what you have to realize about this movie: the thing the movie is almost begging you to not realize. We’re expected to simply guffaw at Rob Schneider affecting the mannerisms of a teenage girl, but when you look at Rob Schneider remember he IS Rachel McAdams. The movie is about HER, SHE is the one who learns something.
An example: Rachel McAdams, in Schneider’s body, gets a job as the school janitor so she can be around her boyfriend, Billy. She makes several attempts to identify herself to Billy and he reacts with disgust and flees each time. We are expected to laugh but think about how those scenes must feel for Rachel McAdams. She loves Billy, she’s trying desperately to convey who she is and because of this absurd circumstance she’s powerless to do so.
She even at one point FORCES Billy to understand who she is and he still rejects her, he can’t love her in Rob Schneider’s body even when he knows she’s really Rachel McAdams. That is huge to me. I hate that when she’s back in her own body she just forgives Billy. She should be like “No asshole, if you can’t handle me at my Rob Schneider you don’t deserve me at my Rachel McAdams.”
So yes, in my opinion despite trying pretty hard to be a bad movie The Hot Chick is way smarter and more emotionally genuine than it has any business being.
8. Little Nicky (2000)
The premise of Little Nicky is so strong the movie barely has to do any work. Awkward good natured son of satan has to save earth from his evil brothers. Love the Popeyes chicken product placement. That joke where he tells people he’s from “the south…the deep south,” gets me every time.
The rules of Little Nicky’s universe are wonderful. I love that he keeps dying and having to come back, I love that he’s cold all the time, I love that he has to put his brothers into a magic flask. I love the amount of times Nicky tells people to “get in the flask.”
I’m not going to fuck around with plot summary. I just want to talk about one extremely cathartic moment. Nicky’s satanist buddies and his roommate need to kill Nicky to send him back to hell. The satanists keep hitting him but neither has it in him to kill. At which point the roommate, played by Alan Covert, reveals he’s always wanted to kill somebody.
The next shot is the roommate drowning Nicky in a bathtub while screaming something about I believe Barbara Streisand — his character is implied to be gay and there are a lot of homophobic jokes made at his expense.
That moment resonates with me so much though. Like, Alan Covert still gets to feel the life draining from a human body but doesn’t have to face the guilt of having ended a life, because Nicky will regenerate immediately. That must be the greatest feeling in the world. Being able to feel what it’s like to kill someone without having to understand yourself as having killed someone. I’m so envious of that moment.
7. Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star (2003)
David Spade’s HM contributions are always interesting and Dickie Roberts is his finest work. In Joe Dirt Spade is a loser who was always a loser. Dickie Roberts is the one thing sadder — a loser who knows what it feels like to be a winner. He wants to be famous again SO BAD, it’s a clear motivation taken in an original direction.
He wants the part in the new Rob Reiner movie “Blake’s Backyard” which to be honest sounds like a stinker but that’s because the plot of the movie is a metaphor for the lesson Dickie has to learn. Reiner says Dickie’s not normal because he didn’t have a childhood, so Dickie hires a family to raise him as a child for a month.
The strength of this movie is the family’s clearly established dysfunction.
Sleaze bag dad, alienated kids, saintly mom. The dad agrees to let Dickie hire out his family before even running it by them, creating immediate tension exacerbated by the fact that Dickie Roberts is a turd.
What you have here are all the ingredients for a story about a guy learning to appreciate and respect other people. He messes up, he grows, he comes back, he is beloved, it’s a classic tale.
In the end Jon Lovitz, who is Dickie’s agent and should have been given a chance to star in an HM movie, gives Rob Reiner a kidney so Dickie can audition for Blake’s Backyard and Dickie gets the part. He goes on a whirlwind promotional tour and is just about to take off for shooting on location when he realizes the metaphor of the backyard in the shitty movie he’s about to do also applies to his life. He turns his back on the role and returns to the family he loves. I can’t tell if I’m bummed out by the fact that he ends up marrying the woman who he originally hired to be his mom or if it’s a huge turn on.
6. Blended (2014)
I am aware I can’t unsay this: Blended is my favorite romantic comedy.
Romantic Comedies are all about fate forcing two people who hate each other to realize they hate each other so much because they’re in love. We start shaky because we’re in a Hooters. Adam Sandler is on a blind date with Drew Barrymore but he’s paying more attention to the game than to her, then he skips out on the date. Immediate red flag — will this be another case of the asshole whose side I’m expected to be on?
No, turns out he’s a great dad! Sandler is widowed with three daughters. Barrymore is divorced with two sons. Fate sends them to the same pharmacy with similar puberty centric childcare problems for which they are unequipped and they help each other out before remembering they hate each other. Fate switches their credit cards. Then fate ups the ante by sending them both on the same FANCY SOUTH AFRICAN VACATION where for a reason it would take too long to explain they have to pretend to be married. See what I mean? It’s Just Go With It but perfect.
What’s sweet about this movie is Sandler and Barrymore fall for each other in a large part by watching how they interact with the kids. Sandler is a better father to Barrymore’s sons than their actual father and Barrymore helps Sandler’s daughters with things they’re uncomfortable speaking to their father about.
The dialogue is GOOD. The jokes are FUNNY. And yes, it is still a Happy Madison film and at one point Drew Barrymore almost falls vagina first onto a rhino horn but these are real characters. I know it’s ridiculous but the seven of them really do become a family during their week in South Africa.
I love how many of these movies in the later stages turn out to be about how valuable children are. I don’t know if Adam Sandler is a good father, he seems like he’s a great one. He’s certainly great at doing irritating voices only children would be entertained by.
As soon as kids get involved the quality of the movie goes up, whether it’s Grown Ups, Bedtime Stories, Blended. Now which ones does he not have kids in? Mr Deeds, Anger Management, Pixels.
5. Reign Over Me (2007)
Is this a great movie? No. Perhaps that’s not the best way to begin this entry. I loved this movie so much even though it destroyed me.
I’m sorry. I’m exhausted. I’ve been writing for three days. I mean I’ve been sleeping. But I’m emotionally exhausted.
Don Cheadle. Great guy. Dentist. Not happy with his life. Bored. That’s my impression. Runs into Adam Sandler, his roommate from dental school. Sandler lost his wife and kids in 9/11. He has regressed into a childlike state. God I can’t even describe this movie. I don’t want to. Part of it is that I’m falling apart but also I just — this movie really affected me. Sandler is not a bad actor when you give him something to work with. He gives a really good performance, even if he kind of speaks like his character from Little Nicky. Part of whats amazing about the movie is that it doesn’t directly mention 9/11 very often. And whenever anyone talks about it they dance around it. That’s pretty realistic in my experience. As Sandler and Cheadle develop their friendship it becomes clear that Sandler reacts with hostility to any effort to make him remember his family. Then finally he does. Cheadle convinces him to go to his therapist friend Liv Tyler who convinces him he has to tell his story. And Sandler gives a monologue that yes I was drunk and dealing with my own shit and sobbed loudly for the duration but it’s a really powerful monologue, I’m serious that Sandler is a good actor and it’s a shame he gets to call so many of his own shots because he could do a lot more work in the vein of Reign Over Me. Sandler could have an Oscar. Somewhere out there in one of the infinite universes Sandler has a shelf full of Oscars.
Then he wants to kill himself and he has a gun but no bullets. Watch the movie.
4. The House Bunny (2008)
The House Bunny is line for line the funniest Happy Madison movie. For every ten bad jokes there are two great ones and this is a staggeringly joke-dense script. Often a character will deliver three in one concise sentence.
It’s also in my opinion the smartest by far of all the Happy Madison films. It’s like the Hot Chick in that despite itself it’s an effective and surprisingly human movie.
Anna Faris is a playboy bunny who gets kicked out of the mansion and wanders onto a college campus where she gravitates towards a sorority house. She wants to become a House Mother but is of course relegated to the “loser sorority” which is in danger of losing its charter because nobody wants to pledge.
It’s almost embarrassing describing the plot. But this I know: The House Bunny, in the most mercenary terms, accomplishes everything it sets out to accomplish.
There are some stellar performances in this. In addition to Anna Faris, Emma Stone and Kat Dennings also really show up.
There’s something tragic about some of these movies. They almost insist by design that you not respect them. The House Bunny is like a good movie trapped in a bad movie. You watch it and it’s SO funny and SO enjoyable and still absolutely not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination.
3. Click (2006)
Click is King Lear but the guy wakes up at the end and it was all a dream.
We all know the premise right? Impatient guy, frustrated with his family and professional life, ambitious, gets his hands on a “Universal Remote” that actually controls the universe. At first the remote seems like an asset but soon it begins programming itself. Eventually the remote is fast forwarding through larger and larger chunks of time, he’s missing weeks, years, months, suddenly he’s obese, then he’s in the hospital, he has to watch his detachment from his family destroy all of his relationships and his son turning into the same career oriented self centered cold business man he regrets being. Then he dies in the rain. I’m not kidding, he dies in the middle of the street in the rain.
Click is not a comedy. I can’t even think of any jokes other than the fact that Bed Bath and Beyond actually has a Beyond section where Christopher Walken traffics in magical items.
Good movie? No. Extremely sadistic? Yes. And at the end of the day isn’t Click a supreme distillation of one of the great fears, the creeping awareness of all those seconds we choose to waste by watching TV or reading articles we’re not that interested in? Who’s to say the last thought everyone has on their deathbed isn’t “oh fuck I wasted my life!?”
Watch it. It’s terrifying in the same way 50 First Dates is.
2. Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)
I am in no way being facetious or hyperbolic when I say Paul Blart Mall Cop is THE PERFECT HAPPY MADISON FILM. HM realistically should always have been making kids movies, it rounds off their more toxic edges while making forgivable their nonsensical plots. Bedtime Stories had a more highbrow tone and Master Of Disguise simply wasn’t a movie, but Paul Blart puts in the effort of a fully realized Happy Madison film and achieves perfection.
God what a terrible movie, I love it so. The fat jokes are so dumb, the romantic subplot is so trite, there’s this really racist and completely unnecessary element of the setup where Paul’s ex-wife was a Mexican immigrant who married him for the green card and immediately left him — it’s horrendous. It’s a horrendous exercise in mediocrity.
Or is it?
Yes it is, but it’s also spectacular in that regard.
First of all, and I’m sure this has been obvious all along but lets just say it: Kevin James is by far the most likable of anyone who has ever starred in a Happy Madison movie. Having him be a mall security guard who rides around on a segway and gets disrespected all day? Mwah! Delicioso.
And here’s where Kevin James takes the good guy persona pioneered by Rob Schneider and really owns it — the thing about Paul Blart is he takes his job so seriously because he genuinely believes in justice. He doesn’t “not know” he’s being disrespected and humiliated by elderly people in motorized scooters, it’s just that important to him to give the citation that he’s going to commit. He’s going to commit to wrestling and ultimately getting beaten up by a woman for trying to break up a fight over an item of clothing.
He loves justice! He loves safety! He says over and over again how much the safety of the shoppers at the West Orange Mall means to him and all of his behavior in the film corroborates that.
I was delighted by the movie even before the mall got taken over by X games thieves. We see Paul Blart showing a new security guard the ropes, we see him bashfully try to get to know the girl who works at the hair kiosk and totally humiliating himself when he accidentally drinks alcohol for the first time at a work function. That alone would have put this movie pretty high up on the list. But then shit goes absolutely crazy.
Have you seen the movie? Then you know when I say X-games thieves I mean all the thieves have skateboards and BMX bikes and they do parkour, I LOVE in kids movies how all criminals are also gymnasts.
There’s one incredible moment that kind of distills everything great about the movie — so Amy, the girl who works at the hair kiosk, and the new security guard are on line at bank in the mall to cash their paychecks, and the thieves come in telling everyone to drop to the ground. Amy drops but the new security guard stays up. Amy’s like, “what are you doing?” He gives this evil smile and takes out a gun and everyone’s like oh shit he’s a bad guy and then the character literally says:
“And the craziest thing is — I’m the leader!”
Is that not the funniest most self aware shit a movie could possibly do while revealing an absurd and unrealistic contortion of the plot? Have a character basically look right into camera and go “I know, stupid right?”
At this point things get a million times more fun than they already were. Paul Blart, realizing he needs to be a hero, becomes the hero he always was, systematically taking out guard after guard and saving the day. Although I can tell I’m completely burned out on plot summary I swear I’m not being lazy, I think it’ll be way more fun for you to actually watch what happens.
1. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015)
In classic Grown Ups 2 fashion, Paul Blart 2 is just 90 more minutes of Paul Blart 1 AKA pure fucking ecstasy. Perhaps I showed my hand too early back when I mentioned I would happily watch Kevin James serve jury duty. The Paul Blart energy is everything I want in a Happy Madison film. I hope they make ten Paul Blart movies.
The first two things that happen in Paul Blart 2 are his wife divorcing him for seemingly no reason and his mother getting hit by a bus for a punchline.
The frame of this Blartstallation of the Happy Madison Cinematic Blartiverse is that Paul Blart is invited to some sort of security guard convention in Vegas and he brings along his daughter, who is 17 and beginning to chafe at his overprotectiveness. Come on, nobody does it better. Look at that premise. That’s BEFORE the addition of the criminal syndicate with the unclear objective!
There’s this great fight scene between the highly trained criminals and the out of shape security officers who have been assembled in Vegas for the convention. Paul Blart doesn’t have his segway for the first half of the movie and when he finally gets one it feels when Thor finally gets his hammer back in Thor 1. The fact that the climax takes place in a casino that’s also a mall is great, it’s great when he gets chased into the mall and yells “home court advantage!” Great fucking movie. The single best Happy Madison movie.
Of course, as with the first Paul Blart, my favorite joke will always be when he attempts to do a cool slide across the ground and has to scootch himself most of the way to his desired location. The scootch in Paul Blart is good — but the scootch in Paul Blart 2 is significantly better.
