director
Dennis
Dugan
screenwriters
Steve Franks
Tim Herlihy
Adam Sandler
producers
Sidney Ganis
Jack Giarraputo
cinematographer
Theo van de Sande
music
Teddy Castellucci
editor
Jeff Gourson
cast
Adam Sandler (Sonny Koufax)
Joey Lauren Adams (Layla Maloney)
Jon Stewart (Kevin)
Cole Sprouse (Julian)
Dylan Sprouse (Julian)
Josh Mostel (Arthur)
Leslie Mann (Corinne)
Allen Covert (Phil)
Rob Schneider (Nazo)
Kristy Swanson (Vanessa)
Joseph Bologna (Lenny Koufax)
Steve Buscemi (Homeless Guy)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 93m
u.s.
release: 6/25/99
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
|
By
now, you either think Adam Sandler is a likable schlub or you
hate his guts. If you are in the latter camp, nothing I can say
will convince you that Big Daddy is anything more than
Adam doing more of the same. If you're in the former group, the
only relevant information is that ... Adam does more of the same.
That's enough for a lot of his fans, and it's enough for me;
the guy has grown on me, and Big Daddy is yet another
pleasantly unambitious Sandler vehicle, as comfortable and sloppy
as an old hockey jersey. No one will ever mistake these movies
for inspired comedies, but you can relax into them and have a
good no-brainer evening.
Problem is, how long can Adam Sandler go on playing the doofus
who won't grow up? That's been his M.O. as far back as 1995's
Billy Madison, where he was an overgrown kid among schoolchildren.
Since then, his movies have followed a sort of dual thematic
thread. You have your Adam-the-caveman-jock movies (Happy
Gilmore and The Waterboy)
and your Adam-tries-to-grow-up movies. The runaway hit The
Wedding Singer was a grow-up movie, and Big Daddy
is another. It's almost as if the jock movies were for the guys
and the grow-up movies were for their girlfriends, who have some
hope that the baseball-cap-wearing Sandler fans in their lives
will eventually make something of themselves.
Sandler's character this time, Sonny Koufax, is a lackadaisical
toll-booth collector living off a court settlement (a taxi cab
ran over his foot). His girlfriend (Kristy Swanson) sees he's
going nowhere and dumps him, as all Sandler first-act girlfriends
must do. When a five-year-old boy, Julian (Cole and Dylan Sprouse),
lands in Sonny's lap, he decides to adopt the kid as proof that
he's ready to get serious. While he waits for Social Services
to find Julian a new home, though, Sonny takes surrogate fatherhood
as a cue to forestall adulthood even longer.
The element of Big Daddy that has annoyed some critics
(particularly Roger Ebert, who seems to have a knee-jerk hatred
of Sandler) is precisely the one that appealed to me. We live
in an age where parents are worrying more than ever about how
to raise their kids; the result, I think, has been a generation
of neurotic kids, shuttled from soccer practice to soccer practice,
and raised by TV and the Internet. Parents talk a good game about
parenting, but forget the basic concept of just relaxing with
their kids. Sonny, on the other hand, is the least stressed-out
dad you could imagine. He can relate to Julian because he's basically
on Julian's level, and his parenting amounts to goofing off a
lot with the kid. The movie comes close to saying that the best
parents are the ones with a lot of free time, i.e. without a
career.
Big Daddy was directed by Dennis Dugan, who also helmed
Sandler's ode to slapshot hostility Happy Gilmore, so
even when the plot gets a little too poignant, Dugan has the
sense to treat it lightly. (Even a potentially tearjerking separation
scene is played for laughs.) In his jock movies, Sandler plays
the undomesticated slob who gets the girl without having to be
false to himself; in his grow-up movies, he presents himself
as plausible husband and father material. Having done that, where
can he go from here? His next project, Little
Nicky, reportedly casts him as the black-sheep son of
Satan, which doesn't fit comfortably into any previous Sandler
template unless there are hockey games in Hell. Regardless, Sandler
represents the Atari generation of guys passing uneasily into
adulthood, and it will be interesting to see where his instincts
take him in the next decade or so. |