In 1990s Adam Sandler starred in series of comedies which brought audience to theatres while leading critics to despair. A good example could provided by immense commercial success and brutal critical panning of Big Daddy, 1999 film directed by Dennis Dugan.
Sandler, who co-wrote the script with Steve Franks and Tim Herlihy, stars as Sonny Koufax, 32-year old New Yorker who finished law school but never bothered to pass bar exam, preferring to live off accident compensation, work in tool booth and spend most of the time in the apartment he shares with best friend Kevin Gerrity (played by Jon Stewart). Sonny’s idyllic life begins to crumble when Kevin decides to propose his long term girlfriend Corinne Maloney (played by Leslie Mann) who can’t stand Sonny. His own girlfriend Vanessa (played by Kristy Swanson) decides to leave him, tired of his lack of responsibility. This happens just as Kevin is to go to China on a business trip, leaving Sonny alone in the apartment. A 5-year old boy named Julian McGrath (played by Dylan and Cole Sprouse) arrives there claiming that he is Kevin’s biological son. Sonny gets the idea to claim Julian as his own child or at least take care of him in order to win Vanessa back by showing that he can be responsible parent. The plan at first doesn’t work well, because Sonny obviously lacks parenting skills.
Like in many of his comedies, Sandler tries to establish protagonist as character with contradictions. One one hand, he is a playful little boy who just happens to inhabit a body of a grown man, while on the other hand, his pranks and meanness towards certain character and social groups bordering sociopathy. One example for the latter is Sonny’s tendency to always remind Corinne how she used to get job at Hooters on the account of her cleavage. Those decrying low levels of humour would be further infuriated with such content being featured in a film revolving around little boy that begins to mimic such tendency of his foster parent. On the other hand, Sandler possesses undisputed comic talent and manages to make his problematic character just likeable enough. He is aided by small army of even more talented character actors like Rob Schneider, Jon Stewart and Steve Buscemi in supporting roles. Among the female cast, Joey Lauren Adams does solid job in the role of Corinne’s sister, but the romantic subplot involving that character could have been easily edited out of the film. The somewhat melodramatic ending of the film is also weak, but director Dennis Dugan manages to wrap everything up in 95 minutes of running time, allowing most of the flaws to be ignored by audience which isn’t too demanding. Sandler did win Razzie for the Worst Actor in this role, but Big Daddy isn’t a film he should be ashamed of.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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