That's My Boy

I admit that I am not without a wicked sense of humor. I will also admit that I have found over the years a lot of raunchy gags in R rated movies to be funny. But with "That's My Boy", I found the relentless cascade of raunchy gags to be extremely excessive. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad had the gags been funny. Though I will admit that I found a handful of gags in the movie to be funny, the majority of the attempts at humor seemed to have an air of desperation around them. It was like a pre- teenager struggling to come up with a non-stop bombardment of gags using only a bunch of dirty joke books as reference. Eventually the humor becomes agonizing to sit through, not helped by Sandler giving his character an extremely annoying voice as well as the fact that the movie is stretched out to a much too long length of ALMOST TWO HOURS!

By the way, the disappointing box office gross of this movie (as well as the one for his previous movie "Jack & Jill" suggests that audiences may be tiring of Sandler's shtick. If you ask me, it's about time.

Yes, its not nearly as good as anything Sandler starred in in the 90's but i would argue that its about on par with most of the stuff he's been in in the 00's laugh wise. (On the scale of movies from the 00's,I think its probably the equivalent to "I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry" if only Andy Samburg were as good playing off of Sandler as Kevin James was. Samburg's not bad, but the movie really doesn't let him do anything outside being the straight man here.) Its certainly got more laughs in it then Jack and Jill at the least. No, not everything that's in it is funny, yes it goes on for way, way, way longer then it should. Yes, some of the jokes are pretty awful. Yes the premise is quite unbelievable. (30 years after the student/teacher affair scandal rocked the tabloids--why would random people still know who Sandler's character is by sight? especially if he hasn't been in the media in a good decade or two at that point and he was near completely broke???) Plot holes aside I would still be lying if i said that i didn't laugh at a fair number of things that happen throughout the film, and i would be lying if i said that i didn't think the semi serious scenes between Sandler and Samburg didn't work. I thought they were really effective. The scene where Sandler is hugging Samburg and tells him he regrets letting him go all those years ago and that he wished he'd been a better dad and samburg drunkenly forgiving him and kind of shrugging off the years of resentment actually felt heartfelt and genuine. That's really what drunken forgiveness looks like. It was kind of similar to the scenes in "Chuck and Larry" where Sandler stands up in open court and says how he feels flat out about people who call him names and how much they hurt more then he'd ever care to admit in public. Sure those scenes were written to give both films some semblance of dramatic heft--and to give Sandler something dramatic to play-but to me they were both effective, and they both show how even in somewhat tossed off comedies Sandler can still manage to maintain his dignity on screen and come off as a better actor then the material. Maybe he really has become a better actor as he's gotten older, because i really think he's a lot better at playing these serious heartfelt moments towards the last half hour of his films where his character is supposed to learn a lesson then he's ever been before. (Especially in something like Click where the humor turns much more bittersweet in the last half) Its because I felt that Sandler geuinely wanted to be a better person to his kid, that i thought the ending worked, (even if the end reveal does kind of come out of nowhere) and i thought the movie to be a resonably good time if you've liked sandler's movies these past number of years more or less....and c'mon some of the things happening are pretty funny.

Also the very quick scene with Vanilla Ice where Sandler asks him to drive him at the end and Vanilla goes "You Kidding Me????" and then strikes a pose and then Sandler waits a beat and says "Is that a yes or a no? I don't know what that pose means Ice." was pretty hilarious--and that was just a tossed off thing. (Why wouldn't Sandler's character be friends with Vanilla Ice anyways???)

Seems every movie Sandler does these days gets hated on. People saying this is the worst movie ever made in history...really? You people must not have seen many movies. Regardless of what Sandler does the rest of his career its now popular to point out how it sucks and not as funny as his old movies. I enjoyed this movie, laughing out loud several times. Sandler does a great job playing the father. The bachelor party scenes are epic, really feel for the characters. Uncle Vanny? Hilarious. At no point in this movie did I think "oh man this is the worst thing I've seen in my life." Had good feeling, good comedy, a solid entry to Sandlers recent works. Much much better than the one where he played his sister.

Fun, funny, and raunchy. This is the dirtiest film Adam Sandler has ever made. And I'm not some idiot who likes every Adam Sandler movie.* This movie has lots of laughs. At the advanced screening, people were laughing so loudly that I sometimes couldn't hear the next line. If you like immature, silly movies (like Sandler's most popular work), then this is a great movie. This is the kind of film that Adam Sandler has always been capable of making even though he chose to take a break so he could work on movies to watch with his wife and kids. Adam Sandler's character Donny Berger is a lovable sleazeball, exactly what you've seen in the trailers. Andy Samberg is the straight man in the routine. This movie has some great casting of young talents (Eva Amurri, Leighton Meester) and veterans (James Caan, Tony Orlando). I hate pointless cameos, and this movie had a couple. Erin Andrews's 8 seconds of screen time were completely pointless. However, I loved every second of Ian Zeiring and Alan Thicke. If I'd have never watched football, I would have completely believed that Rex Ryan was a professional actor. He's a natural, but I could have done without the wink-at-the-camera football references that pander at sports fans. I don't want to spoil the plot, but you can expect lots of sex jokes and surprising moments. Also, because Donny was an 80's kid who basically never grew up, this movie has lots of funny 80's references. But it never felt like rehashed material from the Wedding Singer. Bottom line: If you like crude sexual humor and you go into this movie with an open mind, you're going to have a great time.

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*I like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. I thought Mr. Deeds was mediocre. 50 First Dates was very disappointing (about 2 jokes in that movie). I refused to watch Jack and Jill.

Clearly, then , this movie isn't for everybody. If you're not a true Adam Sandler fan, then do yourself a favor and don't go. Do the rest of us a favor and don't moan and write about how shocked and disgusted you were. Do something else, for goodness sakes! I laughed out loud. I loved the jokes- this is Sandler's funniest movie in years. I liked his "serious" stuff like "Punch Drunk" and "Spanglish"- but I love the raunchy, over-the-top comedies. That's what I go to an Adam Sandler movie for.

I can't give a rationale for why this movie delighted me so much. Can't do it. I just know I thought it was hilarious. And the audience I was in (a small town with a large university) laughed and whooped throughout. And for what it's worth, many of the guffaws and whoops were female, as near as I could tell.

I see one or two movies a week. Lately we seem to have a movie dry spell (in my view). I left the theater tonight actually smiling a huge silly-ass grin. I was uplifted, energized, and felt really, really good.

If you can find this kind of humor funny, check this movie out. This is a particularly well done rendition of whatever it is we should call Sandler humor. I LOVED it!