The Brady Bunch is pop culture’s most famous blended family.
The story of a “lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls,” and a “man named Brady with three boys of his own,” who “would somehow form a family,” ran for fives seasons on TV, endlessly in reruns and even spawned two movies.
“The Brady Bunch is a live-action modern fairy tale of family,” says Christopher Knight who played Peter Brady on the original show. “In this context it’s less odd that it’s lasted for over 30 years; and why it may last in some respects as long as Mother Goose!”
He may be optimistic on the eternal appeal of his show, but he’s not wrong to imply that the idea of blended families could remain the subject of stories and movies for years to come.
This weekend “cinematic soulmates” Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler reunite for a third time, following The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates, for Blended, a romantic comedy about the mixing and mingling of two families.
Hollywood has been blending screen families for years. The grandfather of these blended family stories has to be Yours, Mine and Ours.
Based on the memoir Who Gets the Drumstick? by Helen Beardsley, this 1968 Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda film sees a widow with eight kids and a widower with 10 children (including Mike, played by Tim Matheson 10 years before he found fame in Animal House) become one big (almost) happy family.
The film was produced by Ball, who became so friendly with the Beardsleys she treated all 20 of them to a trip to Disneyland. ABC and Paramount Studios were so impressed with the film they gave the green light to the similarly themed The Brady Bunch show.
The same year, movie legend Doris Day made her final big-screen appearance in With Six You Get Egg Roll, a blended family story about a widow with three sons who marries a man with a daughter. The kids don’t see eye to eye, but soon figure out a way to live together. Released so soon after Yours, Mine and Ours, Eggroll got good reviews, but, as Roger Ebert wrote at the time, “would probably seem funnier if it didn’t suffer by comparison.”
Finally, Step Brothers is an R-rated look at extreme Peter Pan Syndrome. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play 40ish men who become bunkmates and reluctant stepbrothers when their parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) marry. The familiar reprimand “Grow up and act your age” fell on deaf ears with these guys. It’s like watching two overweight, foul-mouthed 10-year-olds with thinning hair going at each other, but it is good vulgar fun.
People in the Niagara Falls area have two chances to see Kevin Nealon next week. He’ll be on the big screen co-starring with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in Blended, or for a more up-close-and-personal look, they can check him out on stage at the Fallsview Casino Resort on May 24.
Best known for his nine-year stint as part of the ensemble cast of Saturday Night Live where he introduced audiences to characters like Subliminal Message Man, the muscle-bound Austrian jock Franz and Mr. No Depth Perception, he was encouraged to make people laugh at an early age by watching comics on television.
“I loved stand-up growing up,” he says. “I used to follow all the stand-ups on TV. I’d highlight when they were going to be on in the TV Guide. Ultimately I decided that would be a great job because I liked telling jokes and I felt kind of an ease with it.”
While honing his craft at legendary Los Angeles comedy club The Improvisation — “I pretty much lived there,” he says — he was encouraged to try acting.
“One of the co-owners said to me, ‘You ought to take acting lessons because one day a casting agent will come into the back of the room, see you and want you to read for their show.’ I had (considered acting) but was embarrassed to say so. I didn’t have any training or anything, so I took acting classes.”
These days he’s a SAG Award ensemble nominee for his work on Weeds, and can be heard doing voice-work shows like American Dad, but his early performances weren’t always so high-profile.
“There was a commercial I did that didn’t require a lot of acting. It was for Nabisco Country Crackers with (country singer) Lynn Anderson. I just had to play the banjo next to her while she fed me crackers. I remember Jay Leno saying, ‘Yeah, saw your commercial. Good for you.’
Then a week later they found copper dust particles in the crackers and had to recall them all so they took the commercial off the air.”
The family comedy Blended is his latest outing with Adam Sandler, whom he has previously appeared with in Little Nicky, Anger Management and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, among others.
“Usually you’re on board if he’s doing something,” Nealon says of his frequent collaborator. “There was one movie I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to be a part of. It was called Grandma’s Boy. It was so lowball and crass. I thought it might be a little embarrassing to be in that one. So
I told Sandler I’d probably pass on it and he called me and said, ‘I really hope you do this because if you don’t do it and it’s a big hit I’ll feel bad, but if you do it and it’s not a big hit, no one is going to see it anyway.’ So I said, ‘All right, I’ll do it.’”
The old saying, “They got bigger, but they didn’t grow up,” perfectly applies to this new Sandler and Company movie. It’s ninety minutes of middle-aged men, urination gags (too many to count) and cleavage shots. So while the actors may have matured (chronologically at least) the jokes haven’t.
Question is, Is it funny?
I didn’t really think so, although I have to say Shaquille O’Neal’s big-guy-Andre-the-Giant schick made me laugh.
“Grown Ups 2” picks up where the last movie left off. Lenny (Adam Sandler in his first ever sequel) has relocated his wife (Salma Hayek) and kids back to his hometown to be closer to friends and family. It’s the last day of school, and as the kids are packing up their books, their fathers (Kevin James, Chris Rock and David Spade) grapple with growing up, growing old and a gang of frat boys (lead by “Twilight’s” Taylor Lautner) who think the four old friends are WAY over the hill.
The movie comes equipped with an all-star comedy cast. In addition to the above-the-title actors there’s cameos by everyone from Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, Georgia Engel and Steve Buscemi to name a few. In fact there may be more recognizable faces here than true laughs.
That’s not to say there are no laughs at all. James’ deadpan dumb kid who can’t add or spell is a funny running gag, Hayek does a pretty good Sofía Vergara imitation and O’Neal’s oversized antics are fun but for a movie about growing up it is all so juvenile. I didn’t expect a searing meditation on aging but I did think they might touch on the fact that they were growing old with more smarts than lines like, “I used to buy ten cases of beer for my parties, now I get ten cases of juice boxes.”
There’s nothing wrong with a good silly movie and “Grown Ups 2” had the chance to be just that, but I just wish it was silly AND about something other than a moose urinating on Sandler’s unsuspecting family, and by extension, the audience.
When I was a kid I had a Halloween joke book packed with gems like, “What do skeletons say before they begin dining? Bone appetite!” I pulled that book out every October for years, but hadn’t thought about it in years. For years, that is, until I saw “Hotel Transylvania,” the new animated kid’s movie starring the voice of Adam Sandler as Dracula. It seems I wasn’t the only one with a well-loved Halloween joke book. A bagel with scream-cheese, anyone?
In the world of “Hotel Transylvania” Dracula is a single father—he’s a bat-chelor—so desperate to keep his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) away from the human world he builds a hotel for monsters far away from living, breathing people. With the slogan, “Human Free Since 1898,” he caters to guests right out of Universal Pictures’s heyday— Murray the Mummy (voice of CeeLo Green), Frankenstein (Kevin James) and Griffin, the Invisible Man (David Spade). Every year on Mavis’s birthday they all gather to throw a fang-dango of a party, but on her 118th b’day she’s behaving like a spoiled bat (see what I did there?). She wants to leave the hotel and see the world, but her dad won’t allow it. However, when a young traveller brings some life to the hotel of the undead she gets a glimpse into the lives of humans.
Like my joke book, (here’s another sample: “What type of coffee do vampires prefer? Decoffinated!”) “Hotel Transylvania” leans toward the silly rather than scary. Unlike “ParaNorman,” another recent horror themed movie for kids, this one won’t give the little ones nightmares. In fact the only people it might make a little batty are parents who’ll have to listen to jokes like, “Invisible Man! Nice to see you!” me, I thought those lines were funny… but then you already know how I feel about jokes like, “Who is a vampire likely to fall in love with? The girl necks door!”
The animation is top notch, stylized and colorful, with cute creatures that should catch kid’s eyes.
“Hotel Transylvania” is ghoul movie for kids that’s family friendly and, like Baron Frankenstein will have you in stitches.
Adam Sandler might be the most perplexing movie star working today. He churns out a movie or two a year, makes a decent grab at the box office and occasionally even earns good reviews. The thing that makes him so bothersome to me isn’t the boy-man character he’s perfected in movies like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmour or his penchant for bathroom humor, it’s his inconsistency. Just when I thought he had turned a corner with the excellent Reign Over Me from earlier this year into interesting adult roles he slaps me in the face with his follow-up, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
Here’s the best thing I can say about this movie: at least it’s not a sequel (it is, however, a remake of the Australian film Strange Bedfellows). It’s the story of two straight beer-guzzling New York City firemen, played by Sandler and Kevin James, who pretend to be a gay couple to receive domestic partner benefits. After the insurance company sends investigators around to determine the veracity of their relationship the men hire a lawyer (Jessica Biel) to protect their rights. Of course Sandler falls for her which jeopardizes their whole scheme.
I’m not sure what aggravated me most about this movie. The critic in me was irritated by Sandler’s backslide into lowbrow comedy. The movie goer in me was annoyed by the almost complete lack of humor on display here and the human in me was disappointed that a movie like this, one that claims to support equal rights for everyone could be so deeply homophobic. What could have been an interesting and funny look at how the soulless government and insurance company bureaucracy can force people into compromising situations instead becomes a repository for the kind of crude stereotypes that kept Rock Hudson in the closet for his entire career.
The idea for this movie might have come from a noble place. Perhaps the writers were trying to create a mainstream ode to tolerance and acceptance, but, in a confusing turnaround, seem to have embraced the very kind of narrow-mindedness it preaches against. After almost two hours of gay caricatures and fat jokes one speech at the end about the dangers of poking fun at people who are different from you doesn’t qualify as justification, it’s simply hypocritical.
“Hey! There’s a new Adam Sandler movie coming out,” is the first part of a sentence no discerning movie fan ever wants to hear. That’s bad enough but it’s the next part that really rankles. “And it co-stars Al Pacino.” Yes Virginia, it’s been a long time since Pacino’s name was mentioned in the same breath as Brando and DeNiro, but his reputation as one of the great actors of his generation shines a little less brightly today.
Sandler plays both title characters in “Jack and Jill.” They’re womb-mates–twins–who live on different coasts. His California based advertising agency is about to lose their biggest client, Dunkin’ Donuts, if they can’t convince Al Pacino to appear in a commercial for a new product, the Dunkaccino. Jill is a singleton, having devoted her life to looking after their parents back home in the Bronx. She’s the kind of plain talker who says things like, “Are you going bald? No, you getting fat and your hair doesn’t realize it has more face to cover.” Now the parents are gone and Jill comes to visit, turning Jack’s life upside in the process. On the upside Pacino becomes smitten and agrees to do the commercial if he can play twister with Jack’s sister.
Sandler has corralled a number of his friends to make cameo appearances–including one of the biggest stars in the world (wearing a Justin Bieber t-shirt), Bruce Jenner and the usual suspects like David Spade–and they get the movie’s biggest laughs. The rest of the movie makes some of Sandler’s other films, like the odious “Little Nicky,” look like the Marx Brothers.
For his part–or rather, parts–Sandler does his usual schick times two. Once in a wig and painted nails and once in his trademark t-shirts and sneakers. We don’t expect much more from him, so he doesn’t exactly disappoint, but it is hard to understand what Pacino was thinking.
Like Neil Patrick Harris in “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle” the Oscar winner is playing a heightened version of himself, but his “Pacino related shenanigans” as Jack calls them, aren’t funny. Instead it feels like we’re witnessing a slow slide into self parody and the movie’s references to Stella Adler and Marlon Brando only add insult to… well, insult.
Near the end of the movie Pacino says (SLIGHT SPOILER), “Burn this. this must never be seen by anyone.” Certainly not anyone who cherishes his performance in the first wo “Godfather” movies. He is, of course, free to do what he wants, but we are just as free not to watch it happen.
I don’t blame Adam Sandler for showcasing Pacino in this way, but I do have some advice for him. If he keeps making movies as bad as “Jack and Jill” he might end up like Pacino–appearing in bad Adam Sandler movies.
With the release of “Just Go with It,” the latest Happy Madison comedy, Adam Sandler puts himself one step closer to Woody Allen territory.
But not in a good way.
He now joins the ranks of middle-aged movie stars who cast themselves opposite impossibly hot love interests. Watching the 44 year old star whooping it up with a 23 year-old swim-suit model put me in the mind of Woody’s endless attempts to recapture his long forgotten cinematic youth.
“Just Go with It” begins with one of those premises that only exists as a movie idea. Sandler plays Danny, a successful Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. Twenty years ago he learned the kind of valuable lesson that can only be taught in rom coms. That is, women cannot resist a man with a wedding ring and a story of martial woe. By day he reshapes rich people’s bodies with the help of his pretty assistant Katherine (Jennifer Aniston); by night he picks up young women in bars. Everything changes though when he meets Palmer (Brooklyn Decker), a va-va-voom twenty-something teacher. For the first time he meets a woman without using the ring trick, but when she discovers his prop wedding ring he fabricates a long story about being on the edge of a divorce. Of course she wants to meet the soon-to-be-ex to make sure the story is true. And then the fun begins.
Except that it doesn’t.
The movie never takes off. It feels less like a story and more like an endless stream of inappropriate remarks and IBS gags masquerading as jokes. That’s true of several of Sandler’s movies, but usually he‘s charming enough to carry the day and usually the movies aren’t this bad. This truly is a case of likeable actors making an unlikeable movie.
The film’s premise is odious enough, even for a rom com but worse than that is probably the most annoying kid’s performance ever—sorry Bailee Madison, but that Eliza Doolittle accent thing you do isn’t cute, it’s grating—and the comic stylings of Nick Swardson manage to make things even less amusing than they already were.
The film’s nadir is a desperately unfunny scene in a nightclub that will make you long for the days when Adam Sandler got into fist fights with Bob Barker and battled a cursive problem.
On the plus side there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo from Heidi Montag which suggests maybe she does have a sense of humor about her plastic surgery woes. Also former swim suit model Brooklyn Decker adds some eye candy, (but acts about as well as you would imagine a swim suit model would act), the “Ha-wow-ee” setting is nice and boomers may enjoy the all-Sting soundtrack but that’s about it.
Despite its beautiful features—both location and cast—“Just Go with It” should be, more truthfully, titled “Just Go Away From It.”
If you liked Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore and Big Daddy you’ll probably enjoy Adam Sandler’s latest, Mr. Deeds. If you enjoy people falling down, bad poetry, and spastic colon jokes, then yes, this movie may be for you. If you still laugh at the same things that cracked you up when you were fourteen, then this movie is for you. Everyone else, though, should take note that Mr. Deeds is extremely juvenile, and while it raises the occasional laugh, they are too few and far between to qualify calling this film a comedy. Cult actors John Turturro and Steve Buscemi are both memorable in quirky roles that showcase their comedic sides. As Emilio the Butler, Turturro delivers his lines with the timing of a master, and makes great use of sight gags. He’s a scene stealer. Buscemi plays the pizza-loving Crazy Eyes, continuing his tradition of cameo appearances in Sandler’s films. I can’t figure out what happened to Winona Ryder here. It’s almost like she has forgotten how to act. As love interest Pam Dawson she turns in one of the worst onscreen performances of the year. I don’t want to kick her while she’s down, but for someone as accomplished as she is, this is truly awful work.
I loved Magnolia and Boogie Nights, but unfortunately lightening has not struck a third time for director Paul Thomas Anderson. Punch Drunk Love I think, was an attempt by Anderson to pare down the epic length movies he is known for and make something simpler and more linear. He has accomplished that, cutting the running time down to one and a half hours from his usual three, but in doing that has sacrificed character development. I was hoping this would be Adam Sandler’s entry to adult roles, and while he is almost there, he displays no ability to grow and develop into a believable character. His Barry Egan is a distributor of novelty items (like plungers with dice on them for use in Casinos), with a severe anger management problem. He falls in love with Lena (Emily Watson) while at the same time becoming involved in a phone-sex extortion scam. Not a bad premise, but when the main character is hard to identify with it makes it difficult for the viewer to feel sympathy or any connection to them. Sandler stretches his usual teen-movie shtick a little bit, but not enough to satisfy. I’m not sure whether this is a mediocre Paul Thomas Anderson film, or a really great Adam Sandler movie.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada 
