Fans of Adam Sandler will tell you he only produces two types of movies: a) the kind that are legitimately cinematic milestones, and b) the other kind which – despite consistently getting eviscerated by reviews – still provides a baseline level of fun / are an easy way to kill some time on flights. But coming to terms with this dichotomy was a tad rough in the beginning.
“I didn’t think about critics… I didn’t even realise that stuff was coming. I just thought you made movies, people go see it,” Adam Sandler said while reminiscing about his early career.
“When Billy Madison came out, me and my friend who wrote it [Tim Herlihy] we were just like, ‘Oh yeah… they’re going to write about this in New York!’ We grew up reading the papers, we were going to NYU.”
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“And then we read the first one and we were like, ‘Oh my god, what happened? They hate us.’ And then we were like, ‘It must have been this paper,’ but then 90% of the papers are going, ‘This is garbage.’”
The initial feedback stung, especially considering the fact both Sandler and Herlihy’s “grandmothers were reading it.” But eventually, the duo adopted a healthier approach to all the criticism. After Billy Madison, they vowed to stop reading reviews “because it [was] so harsh.”
“I say the first two or three – Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer – we would still kinda hear about it. People would call us up, “Can you believe they said this about you?’ I’d be like, ‘I didn’t read it, man…’”
“But everything has turned out excellent. And it’s OK, I get it. Critics aren’t going to connect with certain stuff and what they want to see. I understand that it’s not clicking with them.”
Time and time again, however, Adam Sandler has had the last laugh. Not only has he ranked amongst the highest-paid actors year after year for films deemed critically terrible – projects he himself has admitted are nothing more than “paid vacations” with his mates – when the Sandman wants to turn it on, he cranks the dial all the way up…
- Punch-Drunk Love (2002) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
Rotten Tomatoes: 79%
IMDb: 7.3 - The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected) (2017) dir. Noah Baumbach
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%
IMDb: 6.9 - Uncut Gems (2019) dir. The Safdie Brothers**
Rotten Tomatoes: 91%
IMDb: 7.4 - Hustle (2022) dir. Jeremiah Zagar
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%
IMDb: 7.3
**egregiously robbed of both an Academy Award nomination and subsequent win
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To the point respected thespians like Daniel Day-Lewis personally calls him up to praise his prestige performances. Or as Sandler affectionately refers to the Academy Award-winning talent, “Danny.”
“I’m getting my sneakers and then I look down at my phone and it’s Daniel Day-Lewis,” Adam Sandler revealed during his appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast; referencing The Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems.
“He starts talking about grabbing the seat in front of him. ‘I couldn’t let go of the seat in front of me,’ and just saying how much he dug the movie, he dug [Kevin Garnett], he dug the guys.”
The moral of the story? Reviews be damned, there are Adam Sandler movies for literally everyone.
