Movie review - "Jay Kelly" (2025) ***

 Baumbach's take on Wild Strawberries is full of talent and memorable moments but possibly pulls its punches - George Clooney has some mild regrets but not major ones, ditto Adam Sander's manager (nice wife Greta Gerwig, two kids) and life as a movie star is clearly still pretty good. Full of warmth. Sandler steals the show with a soulful performance. Nice to see Stacy Keach. A lot of nepo babies involved - Emily Mortimer, Bono's daughte, Sandler's, etc.

Movie review - "Happy Gilmore 2" (2025) ***

 Pure uncut Adam Sandler, with all his heart, indulgences and humour, plus his daughters. Some of it is funny.

Movie review - "Kinda Pregnant" (2025) **

 Starts off fantastically then sort of gets bogged down, doesn't seem to really dig into its concept or go spinning off in interesting directions and too much time is spent with Amy Schumer and her random attractive new friend. The best bits are those when the characters are bonkers and/or seem to be ad libbing.

Movie review - "Leo" (2023) ***1/2

 An unexpetedly lovely funny musical comedy about a tuatara who lives as a class pet and examines the lives of the kids and has to live with them. It's jam packed full of jokes many of them very funny and has a warm heart.

Movie review - "You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzbah" (2023) ****

 Very sweet coming of age story abou a young girl planning her Bat Mitzvah - a big deal so I gather, with plenty of cash thrown around, all too believable when you see what's happened with 21st birthdays in Oz. A family affair for Adam Sandler whose daughters play his daughters and whose wife plays the mother of his daughter's BFF while Indina Menzel plays his wife. Sandler's wife is a little awkward though she has some funny scenes with Luiz Guizman who plays her ex husband. The daughters are terrific as is Sandler. The show is stolen by Sarah Sherman as a 'cool" rabbi (although the "cool" DJ was also pretty funny).

I really liked this movie. It was extremely well done there were some terrific bits like the jumping off the ledge scene, a sense of family and the cultural specificity was a delight.

Movie review - "Murder Mystery 2" (2023) **

 Similar to Ticket to Paradise - some top level stars and bright support cast pumping up some mediocre material. Sometimes it's down right lazy. And this has annoying bits where Adam Sandler is turned into an action star, beating up skilled toughs - too OTT and not needed.

But it has shaggy dog charm, a very funny gag from Jillian Bell

Movie review - "A Murder Mystery" (2019) ***

This starts off terribly - it feels awkward and cheap - but perks up considerably once Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler start doing a scene with Luke Evans, then it's off to the races. The film is strong when the two of them play off a third person. The mystery was satisfying, as were the locations and there's a strong support cast including Gemma Arterton, David Walliams, Terence Stamp, Joseph Kani and Dany Boon.

It's silly, not as good as Manhattan Murder Mystery (which clearly inspired it), but was fun and Aniston and Sandler are an ideal team.

Movie review - "Men, Women and Children" (2014) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

This Jason Reitman film didn't find much enthusiasm amongst audiences or critics, despite a cast including Adam Sandler and Jennifer Garner, plus a "hot button" subject matter - namely, the influence of the internet on our lives.

It's a well made, solidly acted film, done with affection and skill - Reitman has a wonderful humanity about his movies. Some of it was so eerily spot on - the recreation of net life, the details - and there were a bunch of very impressive young actors, especially Kaitlyn Dever, plus beautiful music. I enjoyed it when watching it.

But thinking back on the movie, I admit I feel a little sordid or "yuck". I think because every internet-related aspect of the movie had some dodgy overtone - Adam Sandler looks up porn and escorts on the internet; his son looks up so much porn he can't get it up when he gets the chance to bang the trashy cheerleader, Olivia Crocicchia, who is oversexualised due to the internet, who has warped ideas of fame due to the internet, and whose mother (Judy Greer) sells dodgy pictures of her on line; Sandler's wife, Rosemary De Witt, seeks out an affair on line; Jennifer Garner is so obsessed with daughter Dever getting in trouble on line she drives a wedge between them and almost causes a death; Ansel Elgort becomes so into a role playing game he can't function in the real world; Elena Kampouris is encouraged into bulimia by people on line. 

It's actually all quite bleak and down - the only real bright spot is the sweet romance between Elgort and Dever. So my memories of the film are mixed.

Movie review – “Just Go With It” (2011) ****

A real charmer – sweet, well made, and full of heart – as good Adam Sandler films can be, come to think of it. Like the best of them, there are some attractive locations and women, a real sense of family with a strong ensemble cast, excessive comedy turns which jar but nonetheless are funny. 

 

It helps the basic story is strong, coming from Cactus Flower. This was a hit on Broadway because the predominantly middle aged audience liked to see a story where a middle aged man realised he was happier with someone his own age than some young piece of tail. It’s a great commercial idea, and just as the play cast glamorous Lauren Bacall as the elder girl, here it’s Jennifer Aniston.

 

Aniston and Sandler have wonderful chemistry, and his new love interest is played by the stunning Brooklyn Decker – who comes across as a lovely person. Dan Patrick plays the Rob Schneider role of a broad best friend, there are some young kids who are funny, lots of good jokes and appeal. Maybe four stars is too high but it's been a long time since I enjoyed a romantic comedy this much.

Movie review – “Funny People” (2009) ****

Half a masterpiece. So much of it is wonderful, it’s a shame they couldn’t trim and shape it a bit more. And for all the whiff of reality that permeates every frame there’s still a sequence where someone races to the airport at the end. I think it goes a bit wonky in the second half; Leslie Mann and Eric Bana have talent but aren’t quite good enough actors to manage that delicate balancing act of comedy and pathos which the first half does so well. They're both too broad. Adam Sandler is sensational – funny, believable, self loathing. Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Jason Schwatzmann are brilliant as is the female comic. So many great bits, though: the stuff with the doctor, the by-play of the comics, the crappy sitcom and movies they make, Sandler picking up two girls at a gig.

Movie review – “The Wedding Singer” (1998) ***

Charming romantic comedy which exposed Adam Sandler to a much wider audience and ushered in the third stage of Drew Barrymore stardom (she became a child star with ET then a vixen with Poison Ivy before becoming a romantic cutie with this one). In the 90s Barrymore was established in the public mind as a kind of trashy femme fetale but Woody Allen showed in Everyone Says I Love You that she was actually best suited to playing the cute girl next door – this film confirmed it. Despite the jokes about throwing up and horny old people, this has a real sweet, family feel to it – Sandler is close to his family, loves where he lives, is nice to kids and old people. It’s also got one of the brightest beginnings to a romantic comedy: Sandler singing “You Spin Me Right Round”. It ranks up there with the opening musical number in the first Austin Powers – sets things off to a brilliant start. The rest is predictable but quite enchanting in its own way.

Book review - "Drew Barrymore" by Lucy Ellis

DB is barely 30 but she deserves a bio, having packed an awful lot of living into those years. Her rise to stardom was one of the unexpected delights of the late 90s, and it seems she's there to stay for a while. This bio isn't much of a book, being a cut and paste job complete with extensive quotes from press kits and use of hyperbole in the language (it was published in 2003 and ends with the prediction that 50 First Dates would be predictable, but Duplex sounded like a winner). But it holds interest because Drew is so fascinating. A scion of the notorious Barrymore family, Drew barely knew her father and was raised by her crazy mother. Her life fits into easy categories: (1) child star thanks to ET, followed by a series of vehicles (including Cat's Eye) (2) troubled adolesence, with declining roles and major off screen problems (mum would take her to nightclubs so they'd have something to do together, early boozing and cocaine use) (3) getting clean (4) come back as a vixen with Poison Ivy and some highly publicised off screen antics (esp bisexuality) that turned her into a Gex X poster girl (5) re-emergence as a sweet young thing(something which began when Woody Allen cast her in Everybody Says I Love You, and something Allen isn't given nearly enough credit for), rising to stardom with The Wedding Singer and a series of vehicles (6) becoming a real Hollywood player with Charlie's Angels. It's a tremendous rise - Drew's greatest achievement seems to be a gift for reinvention. This even encompasses her love life (every new one is "the first time I've ever felt this way".) She's great, a bit mad, but great and should be around for a while now.

Movie review – “50 First Dates” (2001) ***1/2

High concept rom com has problems – it sort of coughs and splutters in places, relies too often on old people saying something rude or cutting to an animal to get a laugh, goes on a bit. But I love it for one overall reason – the ending doesn’t cop out; Drew Barrymore doesn’t get magically better, but the filmmakers find a way to make it heart-warming. That is very hard to do, and very good filmmaking. There are other things in favour of the film as well: the charming Hawaiian settings, the chemistry of Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler (Barrymore is perhaps the best co-star in Hollywood of dorky men – she really makes them likeable and is believably attracted to them), the fact that the supporting characters operate in their own world of comedy, eg Sean Astin with a series of steroid gags, Dan Aykroyd with monologue lines that aren’t particularly funny, Rob Schneider going off and doing apparently whatever he feels like.

 (A note on re-watching this years late - the ending really got to me again, with Barrymore waking up to find herself on a yacht in the Arctic with a husband and little daughter plus her dad along... brought a tear to my eye. Maybe I'm getting old.)