They just didn't care

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• rotch says:

  November 10, 2011 at 5:36 pm

  “But Pacino him­self brings such unseemly bravado to the film’s inco­her­ent send-up of both his image and what’s left of his tal­ent that his scenes are stomach-churningly com­pel­ling, warp-driving into a meta zone in which self-loathing and self-regard are sucked into some kind of black hole, twirled togeth­er, and pulped into cos­mic dust.”
  That line could almost get me into the theatre. Almost.

• Ivan says:

  November 10, 2011 at 6:26 pm

  Lordy, I *love* that expres­sion on the poor extra’s face in the lower right hand part of the photo you’ve provided–in her mind, she’s think­ing, “This is pay­ing off Yale Drama School, this is pay­ing off Yale Drama School…”

• Unkle Rusty says:

  November 10, 2011 at 6:53 pm

  Well, I am sure you have all seen this, but.…
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3npY7MTcl7E

• Terry McCarty says:

  November 10, 2011 at 10:25 pm

  Perhaps someday someone will write a mono­graph com­par­ing Sandler’s Columbia out­put dir­ec­ted by Dennis Dugan with Jerry Lewis’ films of the 60s.

• Spartickes says:

  November 11, 2011 at 3:43 am

  Please tell me the tile is an inten­tion­al MST3K reference.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  November 11, 2011 at 7:04 am

  @ Spartickes: Indeed, noth­ing but. “The Attack of the Eye Creatures” epis­ode, as I recall.

• John Merrill says:

  November 11, 2011 at 7:33 am

  Glenn – an item about one of your co-stars: http://www.tmz.com/2011/11/11/porn-star-sasha-grey-reads-students-school-district/#.Tr0VfoD31lM.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  November 11, 2011 at 10:56 am

  It’s almost—almost!—inspiring how little the Happy Madison crew care about the movies they make. As that awful buddies-go-camping-movie-that-I-can’t-be-arsed-to-look-up made clear, they’re a bunch of d00ds who can­’t quite believe they’re paid enorm­ous sums of money to roll out of bed and goof around in nice loc­a­tions while attract­ive P.A.s bring them munchies. Nice work if you can get it, and much like the ori­gin­al Rat Pack movies, a lot of the audi­ence is there to soak up the vibe of responsibility-free hanging out with your buds (hence the import­ance of the “loy­alty to his pals” image of Happy Madison pro­duc­tions). It may even be a bonus to rel­ish in identi­fy­ing with the con­tempt the people on screen feel for what they’re doing and those who watch them do it.

• Stephen Whitty says:

  November 11, 2011 at 1:48 pm

  Glad you men­tioned poor Katie Holmes, Glenn, because I’ve noticed that recently, too – she looked like hell in “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” as well, with deep circles under her eyes, even before the little wee beast­ies showed up. (And the one laugh she got in this film – being shocked at find­ing her hus­band in a dress – was­n’t the one I think she wanted.)
  Al, though. Al. MAN.

• Escher says:

  November 11, 2011 at 6:49 pm

  I give Dennis Dugan a modic­um of slack for hav­ing dir­ec­ted BRAIN DONORS, which is way fun­ni­er than it ought to be, and more than a bit under­rated; and, of course, for ZOHAN, which could be the most rad­ic­al thing any stu­dio has released in the past half-decade.

• jbryant says:

  November 11, 2011 at 11:09 pm

  I really liked ZOHAN, too, and hoped it signaled a new level of ambi­tion in Sandler and Dugan. I haven’t seen their sub­sequent col­lab­or­a­tions though.

• KKA says:

  November 16, 2011 at 9:52 am

  This reminds me some­how of the old Henry Rollins rant about how the cre­at­ors of the TV show ‘Friends’ were for­cing their audi­ence to eat the shit off their shoe just because they would, and they asked for more! Not sure if any­one else came to this con­clu­sion, but Sandler may be today’s finest gradu­ate of the ‘Human Centipede’ school of film­mak­ing. While he cer­tainly did­n’t invent this par­tic­u­lar style, his abil­ity to clearly com­mu­nic­ate his cre­at­ive inten­tions to his audi­ence, anus-to-mouth is cer­tainly impress­ive in today’s pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment culture.