Five least offensive Adam Sandler movies

This summer, Adam Sandler plays a guy who had a kid when he was only thirteen. Hilarity and awfulness ensue! Last winter, Adam Sandler played a guy with a terrible, ugly twin sister also played by Adam Sandler. Have you ever noticed that people now seem to hate Adam Sandler? But there was one day, many eons ago, when his brand of crude and intentional shock humor was considered fresh and interesting. Now it often seems tired and cliched, a bit … Sandleresque, if you will.

No one can dispute that his movies are filled with offensive material — even Sandler intended such things as humorous or shocking material. But although we can debate endlessly (and we have) about his most offensive movies or characters … what are …

The Five Least Offensive Adam Sandler Comedies

First of all, I’m excluding anything he wasn’t involved with at a creative or producer level — so no Funny People (that was Judd Apatow), 50 First Dates (he didn’t write or produce, perhaps that explains why it isn’t as offensive?), Anger Management, or Spanglish. However, I will include The Wedding Singer, because it was written by Tim Herlihy, Sandler’s longtime friend and collaborator.

5) Big Daddy

In general, the most offensive things about this movie are the gross-out humor and Rob Schneider (probably not a huge surprise). Rob played an incoherently ethnic caricature (is he Eastern European? Italian? Russian?) with a decent subplot of learning how to read. And Leslie Mann plays a despicably horrible woman, shrill in the worst ways imaginable of that archetype. But those ridiculous stereotypes of foreigners are just a bit worse than the insidious and dangerous offensive in:

4) Happy Gilmore

Although there are really relatively few truly offensive moments in this movie (one of Sandler’s successes), there is still the problematic character of Chubbs (Carl Weathers), falling into the classic cliche of “Wise Person of Color.” He literally dies to help Happy win in a golf tournament — although, yes, Happy’s motives are tied into saving his grandmother from losing her house. There has been been a lack of diversity in Sandler’s movies in general, aside from these supporting characters. But it’s not the worst thing, comparatively — many of his movies are worse.

3) The Wedding Singer

There’s this common feeling that it’s only okay to make fun of a certain minority group if you are a part of it. Well, Adam Sandler has just about wrung the well of Jewish humor dry by now. Truthfully, The Wedding Singer is relatively low on the list of crude stereotypes — the only ones you see are of old people and Jews. And 80’s sluts, but the attacks on women here are friendly, not angry.

And the top two least offensive movies are…

Clacked by Jeremy Fogelman
on Jun 20, 2012 @ 10:00 EST5EDT