It's not me...it's him

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Jennifer Aniston (left) and Adam Sandler in "Just Go With It"

Ed here: I've seen maybe half a dozen Adam Sandler movies and thought all of them were poor. Junior high humor and stories built to accomodate gags rather than the other way around (I know, I know--the gags are the centerpieces of many good comedies but not in his case). I didn't even think he was funny on SNL. To me he was about one step up from David Spade, whose continued success baffles me more even than quantam physics. I used to think it was just me...but no, at least a few others find Sandler empty and annoying too. Anyway there's a piece on Sandler in Salon today that I thought was worth reading.

"Just Go With It": Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman and a sheep
The comedian's latest film, "Just Go With It," offers poop jokes, boob jokes -- and Nicole Kidman hula dancing

BY ANDREW O'HEHIR

"Just Go With It" is an Adam Sandler comedy, which means it bears only a superficial relationship to the customary conventions of moviemaking, and also that there's no use getting all worked up about that. Now, those who collect pop culture effluvia in their heads (such as me) will be interested to know that this farce about a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who pretends to be married in order to get laid is in some sense a remake of the 1969 Walter Matthau-Ingrid Bergman-Goldie Hawn movie "Cactus Flower," which was itself based on a play by Abe Burrows which was itself based on a French play. (There will be a quiz.) In other words, Adam Sandler, despite all the all-American gags about poop and men getting kicked in the 'nads, is a cheese-eating surrender monkey who hates our freedom. Any further questions?

It's tempting to suggest that Sandler makes such horrifyingly vacuous films, in which absurd gags float around in a killing void resembling outer space, because he is cynical or does not care. I think this is verifiably false. On the contrary, the marketplace has repeatedly proven that the public prefers Sandler in laid-back, recovering-doofus roles where he barely pretends to act, and where such minimal plot and characterization as exist serve only to get us from one ridiculous comic setup to the next. Occasionally Adam gets the drama-school bug and works with some director who isn't his longtime crony Dennis Dugan, and the results, as in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Punch-Drunk Love" or James L. Brooks' "Spanglish," are hotly debated by film critics and ignored by everybody else.

for the rest go here:
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/mo...

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