Adam Sandler Film Festival

Movie Review: Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
Adam Sandler's animated Christmas/Chanukah adventure. Sandler voices Davey, a drunken misfit who always seems to be on the wrong side of the law. Juvenile basketball referee and volunteer extraordinaire Whitey (also voiced by Sandler) offers Davey one last chance to avoid jail time. Apart from a few scenes, this movie is relatively unfunny. The musical numbers are alright but the lyrics seem awfully forced. Finding rhyming words isn't always that easy I guess. Most annoying to me was Whitey's voice. This is a character that Sandler has used before on his comedy CD's and is apparently based on someone he knew in his youth. But this high pitched voice is like thousands of alley cats simultaneously dragging their claws across miles and miles of chalkboard. It's hard to endure for an entire movie. This is a below average holiday movie that is probably a little too crude for young kids. 4/10

Movie Review: 50 First Dates (2004)
Next to Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore must be the best onscreen couple. Reuniting after the success of The Wedding Singer the two are again an irrisistibly cute couple. The situation this time, however, is that Barrymore's character has suffered a serious head injury in a car crash years earlier. She cannot remember anything that happens to her, or has happened to her since the day of the crash. Every morning she wakes up without any memories of the previous day. Enter Sandler's character, a womanizing aquarium doctor (typical eh?) who tries to make Barrymore fall in love with him each and every day as she continually forgets who he is. The result is that we get scene after scene of Sandler trying to be super cute and funny to impress her. The notion of Sandler as a petty womanizer is introduced at the beginning of the film but then completely forgotten. He is the most dedicated boyfriend I've ever seen. Sandler's congenital twin Rob Schneider is also along for the ride of course. With a dash of tanning cream he is supposed to be a native Hawaiin. As per usual, he has no real purpose in the movie other than to say a few stupid lines here and there, take the occasional beating, and make Sandler look less creepy than Schneider is. The ending of the film cheats somewhat by skipping over obvious difficulties. Still, it's a nice romantic comedy. 7/10

Movie Review: Spanglish (2004)
Coming on the heels of my linguistics program I expected this film to showcase a lot of linguistic borrowing, code-switching and interference. This was not the case though. I also expected this to be a light romantic comedy in the vein of Sandler's other movies. This was also not the case. Sandler, Tea Leoni and Paz Vega (the beautiful star of Sex and Lucia) form an uneasy love triangle in this drama. Sandler is a renowned chef but passive husband. His wife, Leoni, is a domineering wife and mother who is highly competetive. Vega is their smart and down-to-earth housekeeper who only speaks Spanish. They each have children who bring further complications to the party. I was very impressed with this movie, I think of it a as a slightly watered down version of American Beauty. However here, Sandler doesn't want to sleep with any of the kids. 8/10

Can old TV shows become good movies?

Movie Review: Bewitched (2005)

This nearly made it into my Will Ferrell film festival page. The idea behind this movie is that a real witch (Nicole Kidman), who is trying to lead a normal non-magical life, is cast in the role of Samantha in a remake of the old TV show 'Bewitched'. Ferrell plays a cocky actor who wants to revitalize his career by playing the role of Darrin the new show. Of course they fall in love and Kidman, desite her vows not to, uses magic here and there. The movie is remarkably unfunny and totally unromantic. The funniest moments were clips from the original TV show. This movie probably would have been much better if they had not attempted the post modern makeover and just did an exact remake of the original show. 4/10

Movie Review: Starsky & Hutch (2004)

A remake of the popular 70's action show. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson take the lead roles and are joined by their usual pack of buddies, Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell. The story is pretty simple but the cast are good together. There are some funny moments and it's cool to see that Torino racing around (and getting totalled during the end credits). 6/10

Movie Review: The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)

A remake of the 80's series that I used to stay up late to watch. This movie has none of the charm of the original. The good old Duke boys here (Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott) are just a couple of idiots. The only redeeming scenes in this rehash are the great car racing scenes. The most disturbing part is when the good old Duke boys basically try to kill the police officers chasing them by throwing molotov cocktails at their cruisers. At the end of the movie the governor of the state simply pardons them of all crimes (could he really pardon them of attempted murder of police officers?) just because they are local heroes. 5/10

A little Lynch

Movie Review: David Lynch - Don't Look at Me (1989)
A French made documentary about the man himself. This covers his work up to and including Blue Velvet. It's also shot in a style reminiscent of Lynch's work, with the camera hiding behind a set of blinds, and using lots of TV's within the scenes. It shows Lynch working on a new screenplay and discussing some of his paintings, his fears, and his desire to make a film based on Kafka's Metamorphosis. For a man who doesn't like to talk about his films much this is probably the most we'll ever get to hear him say about his films. 7/10

Movie Review: The Cowboy & the Frenchman (1988)
Lynch's short film contribution to a collection called Les Francais Vus Par. It has a cast of Lynch regulars (including Harry Dean Stanton and Jack Nance). Stanton plays a nearly deaf rancher who encounters a hyper-stereotypical Frenchman, complete with baguettes, wines, French Fries and escargots. The film is slow paced and pretty amusing with a couple of musical vignettes that keep it on the bizarre side of things. It's included on the David Lynch Short Films DVD. 7/10

Book Review: What to Expect When You're Expecting Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Esenberg & Sandee Hathaway
A gift from my sister-in-law Ann. A great, month by month guide to what is going on with mum and her baby.

Book Review: The Expectant Father Armin A. Brott and Jennifer Ash
Another gift from Ann. This book is a smaller version of the above book but written for fathers to be. A nice addition to the above book.

New Simpsons Movie!

Will it suck? Probably, but I hope not.