Showing posts with label adam sandler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adam sandler. Show all posts

FUNNY PEOPLE (2009)

The title isn't misleading, it's ironic. Such a fine line, isn't it? Plot centers on a famous comic played by Adam Sandler, who went from raunchy standup to starring in bad-yet-successful movies (playing himself?)... and he's diagnosed with a fatal disease. Sick and dying, he seeks refuge in struggling standup Seth Rogan, whom he hires as writer, sidekick, and eventually, best friend. Sandler and Rogan have okay chemistry; their humor bounces back and forth nicely at times, awkwardly at others. And their standup routines are like something from an open-mic night in hell. The main problem is, you never really feel Sandler's fatal plight. It might be his performance, or the direction, that takes so much time centering on poop jokes and his sexual escapades with groupies. We only experience his health diminishing through collage scenes set to really loud music. When Sandler learns his disease has miraculously just... gone away, and that he's got a second chance, the film takes a bad turn. That which wasn't on a straight path to begin with veers into a flaming col-de-sac. Rates: **

BEDTIME STORIES

title: BEDTIME STORIES
cast: Adam Sandler
year: 2008
rating: ***

The difference between an Adam Sandler film produced by his own Happy Madison and one produced by Disney is, in this case, the Disney film flows a little better, is cleaner, and has a CGI hampster as one of the main characters. Film centers on a guy who reads bedtime stories to his neice and nephew and they end up coming true; at least the theme and plot elements... and in turn better his horrible life: he works as a custodian at a posh hotel that his father once owned when it was small and ran into the ground. There are good guys and bad guys and some pretty decent laughs, but nothing hilarious happens; although this doesn't matter because it's a bedtime story of a film: relaxing, laidback and unassuming, on purpose.

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THE LOCUST EATERS (BRITISH TELEVISION)

One of those shows that doesn't work the way it's supposed to, but is still pretty good in a laidback, kind of neo noirish, hangout...