“You Don’t Mess With The Guys’ Guy”
Don’t discount Adam Sandler as just another funny man. Recently awarded the “MTV
Generation Award” at MTV’s Annual Movie Awards Show (presented by past recipient Tom Cruise), Sandler sang a song he wrote just for the occasion. Easily the voice of his generation, the collective class clown, he IS idolized, almost deified, by his age group. A combination of witty and goofy, physical and emotional, Sandler has the ability not only to make almost anything funny but to somehow find the funny we are overlooking but know is there, and bring it out in the most hilarious way. His regular guy/every guy appeal makes his comedy relate-able but his unique comic vision/gift is that he makes it looks deceptively easy. He’s not just a comic, he’s one of us, so we feel funny too . . . but if it was that easy, we’d all be that funny.
The generation gap over Sandler’s comedy was never more clear than when CBS Sunday Morning’s John Leonard reviewed “The Water Boy“ (the movie that cemented Sandler as the voice of his generation). “The Water Boy”, while it seemed like just dumb humor a lot of the time, kept audiences laughing nonetheless. Although the fact that it made everyone laugh was recognized by Leonard, for him it just wasn’t enough—Leonard was not happy over ‘dumb funny’. If being funny just for the sake of being funny wasn’t enough, then Leonard was looking too hard. The rest of us laughed and asked nothing more, and Sandler delivered, over and over again. His appeal was simple. He delivered. However, to discount the comic genius of Sandler by saying he can make us laugh is not doing him justice. It’s what he makes us laugh at that’s true genius.
During Sandler’s 5 years on Saturday Night Live, where his comic genius stole the show every time he was on—from “Opera Man” to the endearing and hilarious songs he composed and performed (like his most famous “Chanukah Song“), it was clear that Sandler had a unique ‘voice’ and stood out from all the current (and previous) cast members. There was nothing like him before or since. Part of his appeal may be his guy’s guy persona which seems to be the real him. His success with “Billy Madison” (about a guy who is immature and lazy and has to grow up) and “Happy Gilmore” (where a hockey player switches to golf—the genius of merging the violent with the sedate) although great, and probably enough to put him in the guy’s guy pantheon if he never did anything more, was taken over the top with “The Water Boy”. What is more guy-relate-able than the lowest guy on the football team, the water boy? That is where I think Leonard missed appreciating Sandler—discounting the relate-ability factor in a ‘dumb’ situation made humorous.
If the preview for his new movie “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan” opening this weekend is any indication (and does not contain every funny minute in the movie), it promises to be hilarious, as Sandler brings his comedic genius to merging the equivalent of an ultimate ‘tough guy’ with an ultimately ‘sissy’ occupation as he plays an Israeli version of James Bond, a Mossad agent, who fakes his death to pursue his dream of being a hairdresser. The premise alone is hilarious.