Sandler Growing Up

Written by: Samuel K. Sloan (SoSF Producer & Managing News Editor)

A grown-up Adam Sandler (hard to believe the boy is now 40) and the ever beautiful Kate Beckinsale star in “Click,” a story that focuses on a workaholic architect who finds a universal remote that allows him to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices. Rounding out the cast is someone sure to save any flick regardless of how bad it may or may not be, Christopher Walken.

This comedy/drama/fantasy is yet another journey for Sandler into the realm of the non-frat boy features. If we can just forget about Spanglish for a moment, Sandler is trying hard to leave behind him that image of the smart-ass prankster and anti-authoritarian figure he was so popular of performing while still in his 20’s and 30’s. Now he is in mid-life and his films are starting to reveal more of that inner growth within himself.

Don’t get me wrong, in “Click,” like “50 First Dates,” there is still plenty of that old Sandler to be found under the veiled cloak of respectability, it’s just more adult in nature…sort of like comparing Mork with Mrs. Doubtfire, adult funny but not childish or ridiculously silly.

If I have failed to make my point, then all you have to do is look at Sandler’s next feature “Empty City” that is currently in post-production where he takes on the very serious subject of 9/11 in a purely dramatic performance about a man who lost his family in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Soon after he runs into his old college roommate and rekindling the friendship is the one thing that appears to able him to begin recovering from his deeply felt grief.

Sandler has come a long way since his “Airhead” days, but let’s just hope that, like other successful comics who have done their share of excellent dramatic work, he still clings onto that part of himself that knows how to strike the funny-bone once in a while and still make us think.