Big Daddy
Starring Adam Sandler, Joey Lauren Adams and Josh Mostel Directed By Dennis Dugan Running Time: 1 hour 33 minutes
(Columbia Pictures)
Adam Sandler vehicles are never anything special, but continue to make a load of money. Which really goes to show the sad state of cinema today. While good comedies like Rushmore, to choose a recent example, gets limited release and doesn't make a lot of money, Big Daddy got a huge release and has made a lot of cash. It's also nothing special and doesn't deserve the money it's making. But I digress.
Sandler plays Sonny Koufax, a unemployed New Yorker with a seemingly low mental age. His girlfriend makes a ultimatum to him: either wise up and get responsible, or she's leaving him. By a strange set of events, Koufax ends up with Julian (played by twins Cole and Dylan Sprouse) a five year old kid. After a failed attempt to impress his girlfriend with the child, Koufax decides he wants to keep the child. However, social worker Mr Brooks (Mostel) finds out that Koufax isn't the real father and wants to take Julian back. Koufax along with his new girlfriend Layla (Lauren Adams) fight to keep the child.
Big Daddy really isn't that good. Many of the jokes revolve around toilet humour, and supposedly we are meant to find Julian and Sonny peeing against a wall to be funny. There's the occasional good one liner, but these are usually strangely delivered wrong and lose most of the humour. The film, after all these silly gags, then suddenly turns sentimental, and this is where Big Daddy really goes from bad to hideous. The court scene at the end of the film is useless and unbelievable, and not helped by the soppy overacting. It's a poor attempt to win over the audience.
Adam Sandler basically plays the same role he has in his last few films (except The Wedding Singer.) Joey Lauren Adams is much, much better, and deserves a far better film than this trash. Steve Buscemi pops up in a funny cameo, and his scenes are pretty funny. Rob Schneider is also funny as a crazy delivery man. The two twins who play Julian are O.K, they start out rather well, but then becoming annoying and brattish halfway through and finally turn 'All American' wholesome goodness at the end of the film, where the tear juice is turned up high.
Big Daddy is really nothing special, and is not even worth it for a few chuckles. Although it is actually well put together, with nice direction, good production design and even some montages, this professionalism can't help the fact that the script and characters are trash. Big Daddy is for die hard fans of Sandler, and that's about it.
RATING=** OUT OF *****
A David Wilcock Review ©1999
DAVID WILCOCK david.wilcock@btinternet.com Visit the Wilcock Movie Page! http://www.wilcock54.freeserve.co.uk
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews