It appears
Adam Sandler has finally got a long overdue comeuppance for the years of
selling the American public his degraded, grade D form of juvenile humor (Salon).
The man who has given us a violent golfer, a violent dad, a violent businessman
(in his best turn in Punch Drunk Love), a man who has to go back to elementary
school to gain a fortune, a mentally-challenged (and violent) waterboy, an
airhead, an angry man and a violent hairdresser, has mellowed in recent years
making the crass and really, really boring Grown
Ups and Grown Ups 2. But
audiences appear to have finally tired of his shtick, with his new film Blended having a terrible opening
weekend (it’s $20 million in arrears at the moment), matching the failure of That’s My Boy (which lost $35 million) and
Jack and Jill (made $5 million,
though it did gross $74 million).
Is Sandler
just suffering from the curse of growing old as a comedian? Cool can only last
so long, and many huge stars move onto family comedy to stay relevant – and keep
the money coming in – including Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin,
to name three. Sandler has partially made this move with films like Grown Ups seeking to keep his aging fan
base watching. But like almost every box office draw before him, though he has
lasted longer than most, he might have finally neared the end of the road for
selling crap to the masses. But why? Is it that America has grown weary of
stupid, unintelligent and unintelligible comedy? Or could it be that hearing
Sandler admit that he made a film for $40 million to have a paid vacation in
Hawaii turns off a country that continues to suffer through an economic malaise
for the vast majority of the population? Has our taste improved? Well, I can’t
help but think of H.L. Mencken here and his quote, “No one in this world, so
far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents
to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the
great masses of the plain people.” Has Sandler finally disproved the point?
Well, one can dream …
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