It must be said that despite his recent pop culture rehabilitation, Adam Sandler has mostly starred in trash movies. I, like almost every other 33-year-old white person on the planet, still have a certain fondness for the cheesy 88-minute comedies he produced in the late ’90s and early 2000s: Billy Madison, The Waterboy, Big Daddy. But my affection for these films has much more to do with my nostalgia for a bygone, unashamedly Y2K-esque form of cable TV osmosis that cannot be replicated in the streaming age. It’s 10 p.m. on a muggy summer evening. You and your friends are huddled in an unventilated basement room with a six-pack. Someone turns on Spike TV. Happy Gilmore is on. Life has never been better.
This is the world in which Sandler rose to superstardom, and I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I haven’t read much of his work since I was in college. The jokes weren’t great then, and they’ve only gotten worse since. Sandler took us all through a truly grotesque late prime; I think even his most ardent defenders would be hard-pressed to make a case for him. Click, or Pixel, or the Bosch nightmare of Adult And Grown Ups 2. (Ten percent and eight percent, respectively, on Rotten Tomatoes.) Sandler’s cinematic formula quickly became worn out. There were a lot of fart jokes. A lot of shit jokes. And a potentially lethal dose of Rob Schneider.
And yet, now, in his late 50s, all his crimes have miraculously been washed away. He has turned his fortunes around and risen to the status of a true Hollywood king. Last year he won the Mark Twain Prize. Soon he will star in a film by Noah Baumbach. And Love you, his first stand-up special in six years, debuted on Netflix this week and has yet to leave the platform’s top 10 most-watched programs – no doubt buoyed by strong endorsements from influential media outlets like the New York Times. The comedy special is being portrayed as the next chapter in Sandler’s ongoing cultural coronation: more fodder for the upswing. In the meantime, Sandler’s story about a genie who will only grant him three wishes if he gives a handjob to a man who was suffering from severe diarrhea in an airport bathroom ends halfway through. He hasn’t changed. And we?
Sandler is skilled enough to drape love you with the spoils of his newfound critical respect. The director here is Josh Safdie, one half of the Safdie brothers, who cast Sandler in the role of degenerate gambler Howard Ratner in the 2019 freak-out hit Raw gemstones. Sandler was the perfect complement to the Safdies’ unique sensory frenzy – a world where everyone in a crowded nightclub is constantly taking a phone call – and Josh Safdie sprinkles a little of that chaos into the introduction of this special. Sandler pushes his way through fans and hangers-on in the packed halls backstage, everyone looking warmed up, pores bulging, under the piercing neon lights. The venue resembles a run-down high school theater: insular and visibly uncomfortable, always threatening to fall apart. And it does, a lot. In one surreal scene, a dog gallops from the bowels of the green room into the front row, interrupting Sandler’s joke before being hoisted up by an attentive PA. (These mishaps were planned, but Sandler didn’t know what form they would take until they happened.) The results are reminiscent of some of the edgier, more auteur-like comedians on the scene: Conner O’Malley, Sarah Sherman, Maria Bamford, none of whom would likely be in a Grown Ups 3.
But when it comes to jokes, Sandler stays deep in his comfort zone. There’s a bit about accidentally sending Al Pacino a dick pic. He sings a song about his sister’s ugly new boyfriend. He blames Merriam-Webster’s imaginary, uneducated brother for the spelling of words like “Answer” and “Enough.” There’s an extended riff about applying Botox to his penis, thus removing his wrinkles, which leads to a mystery that makes the men in the YMCA bathroom think Sandler is erect when in reality he’s completely flaccid. It’s not clever stuff, but these stories are delivered kindly, in a stream-of-consciousness babble, without a hint of complaint or discernible political stance seeping in from the margins. Sandler makes no apologies for the things he finds funny. That was true in 1995, and it’s true in 2024.
And honestly, that might be the reason for the ongoing Sandler renaissance. Almost all of his colleagues – especially those from the 90s Saturday Night Live compatriots—are deeply involved in what they perceive as a war for the soul of comedy. It’s led to some exhausting, redundant seminars disguised as stand-up specials. I’ve never had to hear Chris Rock say the word “woke,” but he’s devoted large chunks of his Netflix oeuvre to debating that ideology nonetheless. Sandler should really fit the same mold: He’s a man in his late 50s who can attribute much of his success to the low-brow terrain his filmography navigates. And yet, when he feels beleaguered by sensitive wimps or whatever, Sandler barely lets it show. Rather than waging a culture war, he’s spent his skills becoming astonishingly effective at telling the same dick, poop, and fart jokes he’s been telling for decades—trimming the fat, reforging their elements until they end with something you might call grace. (It’s no wonder that these punchlines are most effective when delivered in a stripped-down stand-up set rather than a bloated ensemble film.) Sandler has withdrawn from the discussion that has made consuming contemporary comedy so contentious and annoying. There’s a certain skill in all this silliness.
At the end Love you, Sandler picks up a guitar and plays a song that functions as a “We Didn’t Start the Fire” for the people who have inspired him throughout his career. He strings together the names of comedy greats – Lucille Ball, Sam Kinison, Lorne Michaels, Jim Downey – before finally punching the late Norm Macdonald and Chris Farley in the gut. (Sandler sang another tribute to Farley on a Saturday Night Live (Employment that was another crucial component of his reclamation.) In the chorus, Sandler isn’t singing about comedy’s ability to change the world, expose grave injustices, or condemn political correctness once and for all. No, instead, Sandler is asserting that comedy’s most profound social power is its ability to make someone who was previously sad feel good. It’s a radically modest statement in a field of performers who tend to take themselves a bit too seriously. Maybe we really have changed after all.
