Hustle

 Hustle (2022)

Starring Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah, Ben Foster, Juancho Hernangómez, and Robert Duvall

Directed by Jeremiah Zagler

Written by Taylor Materne and Will Fetters

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Murder Mystery

Murder Mystery (2019)

Starring Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Luke Evans, Gemma Arterton, and Terence Stamp

Directed by Kyle Newacheck

Written by James Vanderbilt

***This film is currently streaming via Netflix***

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)

Starring Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Elizabeth Marvel, Grace Van Patten, Candice Bergen, Adam Driver, Rebecca Miller, and Judd Hirsch

Directed by Noah Baumbach

Written by

***This film is currently streaming via Netflix***

Trying something new here...uncovered a new website that's a bit of a film diary.  Contemplating switching over to it completely, but for the moment I'm going to link to things there.  Explore Letterboxd...maybe you'll want to join too and we can comment on movies there!

Click here for a link to my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - The Cobbler

The Cobbler (2015)

Starring Adam Sandler, Method Man, Ellen Barkin, Melonie Diaz, Dan Stevens, Steve Buscemi, and Dustin Hoffman

Directed by Tom McCarthy 

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

While The Cobbler is one of the better Adam Sandler movies I've ever seen, you must take that news with a grain of salt because the bar isn't set too high.  Written and directed by Tom McCarthy (and released in the same year as his Best Picture-winning Spotlight - which is a crazy juxtaposition of a set of movies), the film attempts a mix of light-hearted comedy with light-hearted drama with light-hearted fantasy aspects, and while segments of each genre work at certain times, the flick doesn't really ever come together as a cohesive whole.

Sandler is Max Simkin, owner of his family's cobbler shop in the Lower East Side of New York City. Passed down for generations, Max took over the shop when his father left Max and his mother abruptly one day.  Run down and not entirely happy with his life, Max is looking for a way out, but continues the day in-day out routine of fixing peoples' shoes.  When a thuggish guy name Leon (Method Man) arrives at Max's shop near closing time and demands that his shoes be ready within a few hours, Max agrees to fix them, but while doing so, his stitching machine breaks.  Remembering an old non-electric machine in his shop's basement, Max fixes the guy's shoes and then waits for him to arrive.  When he doesn't, out of boredom, Max tries the shoes on...and suddenly transforms into Leon.  With the shoes on, he's Leon, yet as soon as he removes them, he's back to Max again.  Curious as to what the heck is going on, Max stitches another set of shoes on the old-school machine and the same thing occurs, inhabiting the persona of the owner of the shoes.

Admittedly, I found this premise surprisingly pleasant and perhaps full of great (unrealized) potential.  There was an innocence in the film's opening forty-five minutes that I bought into with McCarthy nicely honing in on a bedraggled and downtrodden working class man who discovers the pleasures (and disappointments) of life as other people in his neighborhood.  However, the film takes a turn for the worse, becoming a mess in its second half as Max uncovers some of Leon's secrets that hurl him into a world of trouble for which he is completely ill-prepared.  I'm blown away by the fact that the same guy who wrote Spotlight could actually pen this as well because The Cobbler is just a melange of styles and genres that don't coalesce properly.

Sandler is actually surprisingly solid here and helps the film succeed in its first half.  However, most of the rest of cast are playing severely under-conceived caricatures that don't add anything to the plot.  Also, it should be noted that I'm not one to get particularly in a tizzy about such things, but there's a portrayal of a cross-dressing (or perhaps transgender) character here that is so poorly portrayed that I couldn't believe it made it to the screen.  Like I said, I'm not one to usually care about stuff like this (because I'm obviously inherently callous and inconsiderate...ha!), but this struck me as quite disheartening.  Still, while it has its faults for sure, The Cobbler works for half of its runtime...which is more than I can say for most Adam Sandler films.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - Men, Women & Children

Men, Women & Children (2014)

Starring Adam Sandler, Jennifer Garner, Rosemarie Dewitt, Judy Greer, Dean Norris, Kaitlyn Dever, Ansel Elgort, Timothée Chalamet, Olivia Crocicchia, Elena Kampouris, Dennis Haysbert, J.K. Simmons, and Emma Thompson

Directed by Jason Reitman

Are you aware that the internet can pose a dangerous threat to our youth?

Are you aware that the pressures of being a teen nowadays are amplified exponentially by the power of social media and texting?

Are you aware that some people get so lost in the internet worlds of role-playing games and pornography that they lose touch with their actual reality?

If you've been living under a rock for the past ten years, then writer-director Jason Reitman's Men, Women & Children is the movie for you!  However, if you're anything like me and pretty much everyone else, I'm sure that none of the above questions are altogether surprising.  Reitman seemingly thinks that these notions are somewhat new as he tries to present all of them to riveting, shocking, and dramatic effect.  Unfortunately, we've seen this story before in both movies and television -- and we've seen it done much better.

This is one of those movies where you simply try to guess at the beginning which teenager is going to commit suicide and which one is going to get pregnant because you know it's going to happen -- and, sure enough, Reitman doesn't do anything to reinvent the wheel because halfway through the flick someone gets knocked up and three-quarters of the way through we witness the suicide.  Neither of which surprise us in the slightest as we could see them telegraphed from the film's opening five minutes.  Reitman hasn't crafted characters here, he's simply created stereotypical avatars of what he must think sex-crazed teens (Olivia Crocicchia, Timothée Chalamet) or loner teens (Kaitlyn Dever) or jock teens (Ansel Elgort) or overprotective parents (Jennifer Garner) or cool parents (Judy Greer) or emotionally detached spouses (Adam Sandler, Rosemarie Dewitt) are really like.  He then tosses in a tongue-in-cheek British narrator (Emma Thompson) to spout pithy remarks about the goings-on which confused the heck out of me as I couldn't tell whether Reitman was trying to craft something serious or whether this whole film was just an awful attempt at satire.

Across the board, some typically solid actors are left wallowing.  Kaitlyn Dever (so good in Short Term 12) and Ansel Elgort (quite a charming surprise in The Fault in Our Stars) fare the best, but maybe it's simply because their roles felt the least cookie cutter.  Also, would it be too hard for Judy Greer to land some more gigs?  She makes the best of her part as a mom who posts risqué pictures of her daughter on the internet by imbuing a bit of heart and personality into the film -- something that Men, Women & Children is missing in spades.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Just Go With It

Just Go With It (2011)

Starring Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Brooklyn Decker, Nick Swardson, Bailee Madison, Griffin Gluck, Dave Matthews, and Nicole Kidman 

Directed by Dennis Dugan

Perhaps it's a sign of the apocalypse, but I just finished watching an Adam Sandler movie that I legitimately liked it and found myself laughing out loud on multiple occasions.  Granted, Sandler isn't doing anything vastly different from his usual schtick in Just Go With It, but for some strange reason that probably had more to do with the people surrounding him than Sandler himself, I couldn't help but have a smile on my face while watching this one.

Sandler is Danny Maccabee, a successful plastic surgeon who seems like a genuinely nice guy.  Over twenty years ago, he found out some disturbing news about his fiancée on his wedding day and called the wedding off.  However, he discovered that pretending like he was still in the midst of an unhappy marriage was an ideal way to pick up women.  One night, he meets the lovely (and much younger) Palmer (Brooklyn Decker) and they hit it off right away.  However, unbeknown to Danny, he had taken his ring off prior to meeting her so when Palmer discovers it the morning after their first tryst, she is immediately upset.  Danny tells her that his marriage is through, but Palmer, not wanting to break up a marriage, insists on meeting his soon-to-be ex-wife to hear it from her.

This throws Danny into a tizzy and his thoughts immediately shift to having his office supervisor Katherine (Jennifer Aniston) play the role of his ex-wife.  Katherine reluctantly agrees, but soon their lies begin to take on a life of their own, and Danny, Katherine, Katherine's two kids (Bailee Madison and Griffin Gluck), and Palmer end up heading to Hawaii to celebrate some family time together.

I honestly can't believe that this whole thing works, but it does.  Adam Sandler actually has some pretty solid chemistry with both Brooklyn Decker and Jennifer Aniston (oops, did I spoil something by suggesting that there's chemistry there between Sandler and Aniston?), and Sandler definitely tones back his usual immature humor here.  Decker (a newcomer to me) is certainly beautiful and, while not given a whole lot to work with, manages to come off as a bit more than just a pretty face.

It's a pleasure to report that Ms. Aniston is pretty good here.  Granted, I can't help but think she couldn't have pulled off this role in her sleep (it's Rachel from Friends with more grown-up kids), but she plays the romantic comedy lead pretty darn well...and I certainly have no qualms with watching her onscreen.

With some surprisingly funny turns from Bailee Madison and Griffin Gluck as Katherine's kids and a nice cameo from Nicole Kidman as an old college enemy of Katherine, the cast certainly helps raise this up several notches even when the humor runs a tad thin at times.

I've got to say that I found myself laughing much more than I thought I would.  Sure, it's not high-brow and there are more than enough jokes that fall completely flat (pretty much anything involving Danny's "Austrian sheep selling" cousin played by Nick Swardson), but Just Go With It is absolutely a solid romantic comedy.

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Funny People (2009)

Starring Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Eric Bana, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Aubrey Plaza, and RZA
Written and Directed by Judd Apatow

One would think titling your movie Funny People would infer that there would be humor involved in the film. Well, if hearing "cock" jokes every other quip is your idea of humor, then you're in luck because Funny People will be your idea of a great time!

Adam Sandler plays George Simmons who is basically Sandler himself, or, at the very least, the same character Sandler's played in every other PG-13 lowbrow comedy he's starred in. Except in this flick, we're supposed to believe that he's being "serious" and "stepping up his game" because he's told in the film's first minutes that he has cancer (FYI...the film rarely [if it even ever] says the word "cancer" and uses the word "leukemia" instead because "cancer" would be too serious and this movie's about funny people...ugh...). He thinks back on his life, watches his shitty movies that have made him a star, and decides to go back to doing stand-up comedy. He's kind of lost his touch at comedy so he hires a fellow stand-up comic, Seth Rogen's Ira Wright, to help him out (FYI...Ira's real last name is Wiener...another penis joke...and Lord knows they go back to this joke multiple times!). With his life coming to an end, George also gets in touch with his ex Laura (Leslie Mann) and their relationship re-blossoms despite the fact that she's married to an Australian guy (Eric Bana) and has two kids.

In short, this movie sucked. I'm gonna go on a ramble here, so bear with me. None of the stand-up routines were funny. Humor was completely nonexistent. Writer-director Judd Apatow makes this crapfest go on for over two-and-a-half hours. Entire scenes and entire characters could've been cut. I didn't give a damn about any of these people in this movie. Sandler thinks that weird voices equals funny. Leslie Mann plays an awful character and is really poorly directed here. Apparently, throwing in a bunch of cameos by other "real" famous people is supposed to be funny (Andy Dick, Ray Romano, James Taylor, Eminem, Sarah Silverman all play themselves...there's a ton more). When RZA, who isn't even an actor by trade, is the funniest person in your movie, you're in trouble.

The positive that I gleaned from this movie is that Seth Rogen may have the potential to be an average actor. I actually thought he played a rather likable guy and he showed a bit of acting chops...not a lot, mind you, but I liked him a heckuva lot more than in anything else I've seen him in.

This movie reminded me of Public Enemies. There was potential for something good (that good being a story about a comedian who learns he has cancer and how he copes with it), but it never comes together in the slightest. Judd Apatow once again proves that he cannot edit his own movies. He seems to be too in love with his own writing and/or direction in order to make cuts. He thinks "dirty" equals "funny" and that's not always the case. He thinks adding side characters creates humorous foils for the main characters to play off of (but in reality, they just lengthen your movie by half). He thinks he's talented...I'm not so sure, because I've yet to be impressed with any of his ventures.

The RyMickey Rating: D-