It used to be that whenever he’d deliver a dramatic role, critics would use the excuse that Adam Sandler was “used well” by great filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson or Noah Baumbach. But can we just acknowledge how utterly effective a dramatic actor Sandler can be?
His latest “serious” role is in “Jay Kelly,” and although it doesn’t come close to his best work, he’s quite good in it as George Clooney’s frustrated manager.
The main problem many have with Sandler is that The Sandman’s lucrative multimillion-dollar Netflix deal is still ongoing, and dumb comedies must continue to be made. The endless career lows that have stemmed from his Netflix deal include the likes of “The Ridiculous Six,” “Murder Mystery,” “The Week Of,” “Sandy Wexler,” “Hubie Halloween,” “The Do-Over,” and — about to shoot — “Grown Ups 3.”
Sandler knows this full well. His demo was never the A24 crowd; rather, it was the token Netflix viewer, the same one who managed to make titles such as “Red Notice,” “The Adam Project,” “Back in Action,” “Damsel,” and “Bird Box” some of the 10 most-watched films on the streamer’s all-time list.
Last night, Sandler received the Career Achievement Award at AARP’s Movies for Grownups Awards, where he got real about what the future holds, delivering it only the way he can, with silly laughs and honesty (via THR):
I don’t know how much time I have left — 60, 70 years. 80 tops, maybe 90 if I start working out and taking creatine. I promise to everyone here tonight, I will make at least 50 more movies before I am dead — and at least 25 of them will be good.
Listen, I’m a Sandler fan, and that includes some of the low-IQ comedies he delivered in the ’90s and ’00s, especially “The Waterboy” and “Happy Gilmore,” and I stand by my assertion that Sandler will defy the odds and win an Oscar one day. Honestly, if you ignore all the silly comedies — which comprise around 80% of his filmography — Sandler has proven multiple times that he’s a great actor. His work in “Punch-Drunk Love,” “Uncut Gems,” “The Meyerowitz Stories,” and “Hustle” is proof enough of that.
When Sandler digs deep into a performance, like the one in “Punch-Drunk Love,” there’s an eccentricity to it that most mainstream movie stars simply don’t have. He taps into something that I can best describe as wounded, awkward, and —quietly?— explosive — a kind of emotional instability that feels authentic. You have to endure the disposable comedies so that, every once in a while, Sandler can reach this type of performance out of the bag.
And that’s the thing with Sandler: you take the good with the bad. His assertion that half the films he’s going to make in the next few years won’t be good isn’t a joke — it’s just reality. And if anything, he knows it, you know it, it’ll be more than half. But we await his next great performance.