Scorecard of Adam Sandler films predicts if new movie Uncut Gems will be a hit or flop
Why has comic Adam Sandler never succeeded in breaking into more serious roles?
Adam Sandler is inspiring Oscar buzz for Uncut Gems, a crime drama that comes to Australia later next month. In the film he plays Howard Ratner, a jittery New York jeweller and gambler who makes high-stakes bets. If things go the wrong way for Howard, it could be disastrous. But there is a chance something remarkable will happen.
Maybe the role works because it’s similar to the gamble of watching a Sandler movie.
You never know what you’re going to get. The 53-year-old Sandler earned his following in the 1990s playing arrested-development man-boys in classics such as Happy Gilmore, The Waterboy and Big Daddy. Sometimes he gets more serious, as in The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), Reign Over Me and the coming Uncut Gems.
Many of his films have been box-office sensations, such as the two Grown Ups films that raked in $163m and $247m worldwide, according to IMDb.
Others have been financial flops, such as The Cobbler, which is estimated to have grossed just $35,000 in North American theatres. Sandler can draw audiences but they’re not always impressed.
Professional critics are harsher, savaging comedies he made this decade, such as Jack and Jill and The Ridiculous 6. Yet every so often there is an unexpected gem.
How can you improve your odds of picking a worthwhile Sandler movie?
We ran the numbers on 40 films where Sandler stars or co-stars, analysing audience and critics’ scores on the review site Rotten Tomatoes to isolate key Sandler success factors. Here is a tip sheet.
1. Working for the first time with a director
The average critics’ “Tomatometer” score for all Sandler films is a skimpy 35 out of 100. The figure rises to 44 — a 26 per cent jump — when Sandler is working with a director for the first time. Perhaps new directors push him out of his comfort zone and extract better performances. His work for Noah Baumbach (The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), Judd Apatow (Funny People) and Paul Thomas Anderson (Punch Drunk Love) suggests that is the case.
Even his most frequent collaborators, directors Dennis Dugan (Happy Gilmore) and Frank Coraci (The Wedding Singer), started strong before fading.
Director brothers Josh and Benny Safdie, who turned teenage idol Robert Pattinson into a fabulous low-life in Good Time, sought out Sandler for Uncut Gems. It paid off with a critics’ score of 95 — Sandler’s highest ever.
2. Not playing producer
Sandler produces films through his company Happy Madison Productions, which often brings in a recurring troupe of filmmakers and co-stars. When he isn’t a producer on a movie, critics and audiences like it better, on average. Critics have given films where Sandler is a producer or executive producer a crushingly low score of 24. When he isn’t a producer, the rating more than doubles to 53. Audience scores also show a boost — to 60 from 54 — when Sandler isn’t producing. He isn’t a producer of Uncut Gems.
3. Premiering at a film festival
If a movie goes to Cannes or Toronto before opening in theatres, somebody thinks it is special. It isn’t always a lock, but Punch-Drunk Love (2002) and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017) both premiered at the Cannes film festival, and are among Sandler’s highest rated films. Uncut Gems premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, then screened at Toronto, New York and London festivals before its theatrical release.
4. Losing the SNL gang
Sandler owes his career to Saturday Night Live, where he worked from 1990 to 1995, and he has been loyal to the castmates he came up with. His pals may be funny, but their presence in his movies usually signals a lack of excellence. Sandler films with SNL alum David Spade score just 22 among critics and 53 with audiences, both below average. The audience average score for all Sandler movies is 57. Sandler movies that include former SNL pal Chris Rock score 23 and 49, again subpar. With Rob Schneider, also ex-SNL, they score 58 with audiences (yes, above average!) and a dismal 26 with critics. These friends aren’t in Uncut Gems.
5. Keeping it real
The outlier to the tips above is Sandler’s 2017 film, The Cobbler. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Sandler didn’t produce and the cast wasn’t laden with his SNL buddies. The director was Tom McCarthy, who hadn’t worked with Sandler and who later directed the Oscar-winning Spotlight. So why the anaemic score of nine from critics and 36 from viewers? The big difference was a supernatural element — Sandler’s character magically turned into other characters by wearing their shoes — which devolved into cringeworthy gags and racial stereotypes.
Sandler may be inventive but high concepts haven’t produced his finest cinematic moments, whether they have involved playing a dual role as his own sister in Jack and Jill, parodying the Western movie genre in The Ridiculous 6, or operating a super-powered remote control in Click. Sandler voices Dracula in the well-received Hotel Transylvania franchise, but animated films have different rules. In movies, everyone seems to like Sandler best when he’s being himself, like portraying the middle-age schlub with a 20-something mistress in Uncut Gems or the belligerent hockey player who is a world-class golfer in Happy Gilmore.
The Wall Street Journal