Leo (2023) - Movie Review

Well, here’s a combination that feels like it was pulled out of an Angry Critic’s nightmares: A Happy Madison animated movie about talking animals. Or maybe just this Angry Critic’s nightmares, since both talking animal movies and Happy Madison productions have been regular targets since this blog started. But for as much shit as I give the both of them when they’re bad, that’s mainly because I still have fond memories of when they were both good. As I got into when I looked at Hubie Halloween, Adam Sandler was part of my childhood and was something of an oddball inspiration as his stock character of the quick-to-anger outsider was a lot like me back then. And talking animal movies exist for a reason, as they make telling stories to kids about characters going through more adult issues easier to deal with, since cute animals are a lot easier to relate to than those old people with their rules and bedtime mandates (in a child’s mind, at least).

Murder Mystery 2 (2023) - Movie Review

After the atrocity we dealt with yesterday, I’m in the mood to push my luck, much like a naïve man who just survived a shootout and is now under the impression that nothing can kill him. As such, knowing that even the depths of Happy Madison rarely reach the utter revulsion of Freelance, I’ll be spending today and tomorrow looking at the four HM releases that made it to Netflix.

Hustle (2022) - Movie Review

Over the lifespan of this blog, what began as me going after Happy Madison films for the sake of cheap shots has gradually resulted in me reconnecting with how much Adam Sandler basically ruled my world as a kid. There’s just something about his socially-awkward, hair-trigger, good-natured schtick that still finds ways to warm my neurodivergent heart. Not that that really applies here, though, as this film has Sandler in one of his more dramatic roles, and as the last few years have shown, he’s as much in his element here as he is with his more memetic deliveries and one-liners.

Hubie Halloween (2020) - Movie Review

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.

Uncut Gems (2020) - Movie Review

What irony that a film all about a compulsive gambler would find me actually cashing in on one of my bets. A couple of years ago, between Adam Sandler’s work on Sandy Wexler and The Meyerowitz Stories, I saw a major shift in his place as an actor. The kind that not only gave hope for bigger and better things to come, but also gave the impression that the man could be on the verge as a serious breakthrough, big enough to possibly warrant some re-evaluation of someone most audiences wrote off years ago. Meyerowitz may have shown that that shift wasn’t a fluke, but this film outright confirms that rejuvenation.

Murder Mystery (2019) - Movie Review

Having covered all of the previous Happy Madison Netflix features, I freely admit that I didn’t go into this film expecting anything all that decent. And sure enough, in record time, that feeling of déjà vu kicks in with the usual hallmarks of an Adam Sandler production: Prominent in-your-face product placement with the Amazon gift card (wow, is this not a good time to be shilling out for them), Sandler’s wife being cast in a role meant to show off how hot she is (she’s literally billed as ‘Great Looking Flight Attendant’), and the story as a whole is a thinly-veiled excuse for a European vacation, just like the last time Sandler and Jennifer Aniston got together with Just Go With It.

The Week Of (2018) - Movie Review

 

Say what you will about Adam Sandler (and I have, at great length in past reviews), but his collaborative deal with Netflix might be one of the smartest decisions he’s ever made. After all, his films have become so egregiously not-worth-paying-cinema-ticket-prices-for that pairing them up with thousands of other, better films as part of a monthly subscription is the closest he’s gonna get to having an audience again. Okay, over 2017, he showed some definite signs of improvement, so maybe this film will benefit from that. Well, it kinda does and it kinda doesn’t.

Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: Lonely and overworked, Dracula (Adam Sandler) needs to take a break. Luckily, his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) gets tickets for them and the rest of the Drac Pack to go on a luxury cruise just for monsters. As they indulge in some down time, it seems that Dracula may have found what he's looking for in the ship's captain Ericka (Kathryn Hahn). However, it seems that this cruise isn't all that it seems, and Dracula's old adversary Dr. Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) lays in wait to wreak his revenge on all monsters.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Collected) (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Harold Meyerowitz (Dustin Hoffman) is a sculptor, retired arts professor, and the patriarch of a family full of aspiring and at least formerly-aspiring artists. His son Danny (Adam Sandler) moves back in with Harold and his wife Maureen (Emma Thompson) and begins to reconnect with his family roots. However, as Danny interacts with his sister Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) and brother Matthew (Ben Stiller), he begins to reflect on the upbringing that Harold gave all of them, and if he can improve in terms of raising his own daughter Eliza (Grace Van Patten).

Sandy Wexler (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: In 1990’s Los Angeles, talent manager Sandy Wexler (Adam Sandler) is struggling to get his clients off the ground. However, his luck is set to change once he happens upon Courtney Clarke (Jennifer Hudson), an incredibly talented singer. He signs Courtney as one of his clients, and before too long, it seems like Sandy has found the talent that could take him to the top. But as her star rises, and others seek to get her for themselves, Sandy’s will to do what’s best for his clients is going to be tested.

The Do-Over (2016) - Movie Review

It’s Adam Sandler time again. hooray. I know that I’m running the risk of looking needlessly contrarian, but I stand by what I’ve been saying all this time. I still have the same love for Sandler’s older work that I had when I was a kid, and while his newer work is definitely several flights of steps down, I fail to see what makes it so bad that it warrants the scorn that’s been regularly thrown his way. Well, mostly fail to see: Along the same lines of maintaining opinion, That’s My Boy is still one of the single worst films I’ve ever sat through and last year’s The Ridiculous Six still sucks on rye bread. And it seems like we’re going forward down the road Ridiculous Six has lain before us, as this is the second of the scheduled four films that Happy Madison is co-producing with Netflix. I’d argue that taking him off of cinema screens is definitely a step in the right direction, but keep in mind just how many people are watching shows and movies through on-line streaming; he’s still going to nab an audience. Which includes me this time around, as I take a look at his latest... well, 'effort' is a bit of a stretch, but we’ll only see just how much of a stretch once we get started.

The Ridiculous Six (2015) - Movie Review

I hate Rotten Tomatoes. Despite how it’s widely considered to be a good barometer for how good/bad a film is, it’s surprisingly broken if you actually look at the scores. Some of the reviews that are listed as Fresh or Rotten, if you actually look at even the blurbs on the site itself, are extremely arbitrary, the actual overall score is tucked away underneath the big percentage rate, and said percentage only amounts to how many people liked a film vs. disliked a film. Not how much, just whichever way their opinion falls. For a site that’s meant to help show an overall opinion, being misleading is probably the worst thing you can do. However, with that said, they are especially good in one certain area: The 0%; the films that absolutely no-one defended. Given how this illustrious list includes films like C Me Dance, Fred: The Movie, A Thousand Words and Keith Lemon: The Film, easily some of the worst films I’ve ever seen, that integer still carries a lot of weight. So, what does that say when today’s subject is only one of the three released by Happy Madison Productions to have received a 0%? I mean, that’s means that this is even worse than The Master Of Disguise, That’s My Boy and Paul Blart: Mall Cop, among so many others? Is this truly that bad? Time to, reluctantly, find out.

Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015) - Movie Review

If you spent any amount of time watching Cartoon Network during its heyday, or even grew up on it like I did, then you owe a lot to one Genndy Tartakovsky. The man’s work on shows like Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack and the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated mini-series has gone on to make him one of the most vibrant creative minds that Hanna-Barbera has ever been associated with… yes, seriously. As such, the next big step in terms of flexing animated muscle is going on to do feature films, and so he was brought on to direct 2012’s Hotel Transylvania. That is, he was brought on as the sixth reported director of the film. Usually a pretty bad sign, especially for a first-time film director, but he nevertheless gave it his all and made the film his own. The result was a surprisingly fun and not-surprisingly well animated family film; sure, it had its annoying/stupid moments but the good points far outweighed the bad. Since it made over four times its budget at the box office, it of course got a sequel. Let’s hope that this isn’t another sequel made for its own sake, because I want to maintain my respect for Genndy as best I can.

The Cobbler (2015) - Movie Review

Yep, we’re looking at another Adam Sandler film. For as much as I’ve brought up how some of his films are just grade-F wastelands, I seem to have developed a pattern where I have been defending the man’s work a lot more than I ever thought I would. Hell, my better-than-the-norm reception for Blended is the entire reason that I now have a yearly tradition of listing films that I disagree with the consensus on. Well, with any luck, things will be a little easier to deal with this time around as I’m looking at a Sandler film not produced by Happy Madison Productions. Who knows, maybe we could get another Funny People or Punch Drunk Love here. Or maybe we’ll get a film that has a lower approval rating than Pixels… seriously.

Pixels (2015) - Movie Review

I may not be as frequent a gamer as I used to be, but these square eyes aren’t something that have faded since then; I may suck when going against other players, but I still have a large piece of heart dedicated to the bit-bound medium. However, this is another one of those ideas where people actively attempt to create a Reese’s-style combination: People love video games and people love movies. Now, over the last several years, games have become increasingly cinematic thanks to the works of Hideo Kojima and the staff at Naughty Dog, among others, and have yielded some truly amazing results. Transferring the other way, not so much, as I’ve discussed before in great detail. So, with the idea of a video game-centric movie not exactly having the best pedigree to support itself, how do you think it’ll work when backed by the likes of Happy Friggin’ Madison

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015) - Movie Review

I’ve made fun of Jai Courtney serving as a human signpost that what he’s involved in will most likely be crap, but that’s small potatoes compared to some production companies out there that say the same thing. Namely, the production studio behind today’s outing: Happy Madison Productions, also known as Adam Sandler’s production company. Now, as much as many parts of me want to jump onto the anti-Sandler bandwagon, given how little regard I hold for films like That’s My Boy, the fact remains that his films took up a rather large portion of my childhood: Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, 50 First Dates, even Little Nicky are all on good standings with me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll happily call them out when they screw up, and they do so with surprising relish and on a colossal scale, but if my defence of Blended proves nothing else than it at least shows that I have some mercy in my heart for the man and his stable of friends after all this time. So, where does their latest offering land with me?

Top Five (2015) - Movie Review

As a means to prove that comedy isn’t exactly equal across all fields, not every comedian that branches out into becoming an actor succeeds. I mean, for every Robin Williams who manages to not only succeed but succeed beyond the realm of comedic works, we get a Larry The Cable Guy who manages to make people miss their already lame stand-up with the cesspool-quality acting they bring to the big screen. Not to say that the best stand-up comedians are immune from making crap; as much as I love Robin Williams’ great films, he made his fair share of bombs back in the day. So, when news hit that Chris Rock, someone who fits nicely in my top five favourite stand-ups and who has a pretty shaky filmography himself, was releasing another film that he directed and also wrote on his own, I can be forgiven for being a bit worried. Time to see how it actually turned out.