Thursday, August 27, 2015

Forward Into The Past

If you had a time machine, would you go back to Germany in the early 1930's and kill Hitler? Maybe you would go even further and put a great big hole in the Mayflower, ensuring at least another decade or two of peace and quiet for the Native Americans who were doing just fine without a Thanksgiving Feast, thank you very much. Or maybe your sights are just a little shorter, and you happen to be very interested in movies and entertainment. You might figure out a way to halt production on any of the "worst upcoming movies in the next five years." Sure, you could prevent genocide, but if in your mind any movie made starring Adam Sandler is on a par with the attempted extinction of a race of people, then you understand what we're up against.
Please understand that I once enjoyed a bit of Sandler with some seventies soundtrack embellishment. I enjoyed "Big Daddy." I liked "The Wedding Singer." I laughed at "Happy Gilmore." And I truly enjoyed and respected "Punch Drunk Love." I truly believed, in 2002, that Adam Sandler had hit upon something that might take his acting skills and his whole act to a new level. I was wrong. Now he has become a punch line in the story of his own career. I was even tempted to see "Pixels," because it sounded like a very amusing premise: a group of aging video game players have to save the earth from aliens who descend upon the Earth in the shape of all those arcade hits from long ago. Except it starred Adam Sandler, and so I stayed away.
If only I had access to that time machine. I could go back to 2002 and sit Adam down. I could show him clips of the bile he has been serving up for the past decade or so and tell him that there is no reason he couldn't follow his comedic muse and still maintain a certain level of quality. He could even keep finding ways to keep his buddies gainfully employed. Hire a writer. Or two. Get somebody to direct you who isn't afraid of you.
And don't give up and stick your movie on Netflix because your new movie has been deemed offensive by those Native Americans whom we spoke about earlier. Come to think of it, if there was a way to keep any of Sandler's relatives off the Mayflower, maybe we could change history for the better. For good.

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