After Adam Sandler failed to get a nomination for his work on Uncut Gems (and it really speaks to the quality of that performance that it even qualified as a ‘snub’), he went viral with threats that he would go on to make, intentionally, the worst movie ever out of spite. With how much of a critical punching bag he remains to be, it’s quite easy to make jokes about how this is likely the first time he’s given warning for his latest film being terrible… but no. No, I’m not going that route. Instead, I’m going to point out how that kind of self-aware, not-really-taking-itself-seriously humour is actually a pretty good lead-up to yet another solid starring role.
More so than anything to do with his more recent successes, Sandler and company seem to be turning the clock all the way back to the early days of the films that gave Sandler’s production company its name. There’s a lot of nostalgia for Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison to be found here, like the opening cameo from Ben Stiller, as well as the recurring schoolkid bully O’Doyle, and it all crystallises in Sandler’s performance as Hubie DuBois.
Words really can’t express how refreshing it is to see him ditch the uber-abrasive ladies’ man he kept insisting on portraying throughout the 2010s, and instead going back to basics as a scaredy-cat underdog with a silly voice who takes his job, here being a ‘Halloween monitor’, just a little bit too seriously. While the voice still sounds like what everyone else sounds like when they make fun of Sandler’s on-screen schtick, there’s something endearing about how much he loves the Halloween season, almost serving as patron saint for the tradition (the people who get scared during this time are usually the ones having the most fun… provided they want to join in), and I can safely say I’ve never been so fascinated by a character’s thermos in a movie before.
Even the little things, like how he’s so used to people throwing shit (figurative and literal) at him while he’s bikes down the street that he can instinctively dodge it, add to how it feels like a real character that he’s portraying and not just an extension of his ego. The Sandy Wexler effect is still in play.
The humour surrounding him is the most consistent a Happy Madison production has ever gotten in at least a decade, something aided by how intentionally silly so much of it is. Embodying the notion that you don’t need to be a kid to enjoy Halloween, the quipping and slapstick likewise aims for broadness and actually manages to get some well-earned chuckles. I managed to laugh more within the first three minutes of this than I did during the entirety of quite a few HM films I’ve covered on here.
While Herlihy and Sandler’s scripting is a pretty large part of that puzzle (some of their best combined work in many years), I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up Rupert Gregson-William’s soundtrack and how much it adds to the atmosphere. It straight-up sounds like he’s trying to channel Danny Elfman, but rather than being derivative, it fits in really well with the tone of the story in how unashamedly cheesy it is. The synths, the spoopy textures in the instrumentation, the strings… my god, I don’t think I have ever enjoyed faux-dramatic orchestra stings more than here. After being so excruciatingly annoyed by filmmakers doing it in earnest over the years, the way the intentionally-chintzy quality of the strings play against the usual ‘characters startling other characters’ routine was pretty enjoyable.
While the film deserves its cred for its atmosphere, both as a Halloween-set comedy and the parts where it gets genuinely suspenseful with the multiple masked crazies running around, it’s the overall story that really made me relive the good ol’ days when I would binge Adam Sandler movies all the time. People clown on the formula, the potty humour, and the bizarre attempts at pathos in his work, but speaking personally, his early work where he played dudes with anger issues in bizarre situations? As a kid who had some pretty extreme rage problems, watching films like Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, The Waterboy, and Anger Management helped me deal with a lot of shit early on.
I bring this up because this film feels like it’s cut from the same cloth, where all the juvenile humour and silly voices had an actual point to them, usually to deliver some kind of message about growing up or following your dreams or how getting psychiatric help isn’t something to be ashamed of (people really don’t give Anger Management enough credit). And here, it manifests in how Hubie is basically the Carly Beth of modern-day Salem, at the mercy of bullies who think that spending all their time and effort on scaring someone who requires the least effort is something to be proud of (bullying never made much sense to me, frankly).
The way the film looks at Hubie’s character, the shit he deals with (again, both figurative and literal), and the strength it must take to not just become part of the vindictive horde in retaliation, is rather affecting and shows him actually hitting the emotional target he’s aiming for for a change. Again, this feels like something that would’ve been helpful for me back in the day, and since the film’s tone operates in that same PG-13 ‘just dirty enough for kids to think they're mature for watching it’ framework… honestly, I can see a lot of kids today getting something out of it too.
This isn’t a masterpiece or anything. The comedy is still spotty, the plot is a bit of a jumble all things considered, and Sandler is still going to automatically turn a lot of moviegoers away. But as someone who still carries a torch for Sandler’s early days, where his abrasive persona was tempered by genuine heart, this was a nice little nostalgia trip and a pretty fun Halloween flick as well.
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