Review of Sandy Wexler (2017) by Kaptenvideo — 18 Aug 2017

Sandy Wexler (Adam Sandler) is a talent manager working in Los Angeles in the 1990s, who could be a major player if he didn’t lie all the time and have a bumbling talk.

He falls for his newest client, a tremendously talented singer (Jennifer Hudson) which is a start to a decades-spanning star-crossed love story.

In a world where the studios are ready to spend big bucks to make a movie out of literally every- and anything („The Emoji Movie“), it does not come as a surprise that there’s a 130 minute comedy about how talent managers can be cool, too, if they would only be able to stop lying all the time.

What could have been a semi-decent couple of minutes long sketch has taken a form of Adam Sandler project which means the storytelling and quality of directing are unbearably limp for most viewers but Sandler fans (including me) still magically get something out of it.

2010’s have not been good for Sandler fans, and this Netflix-produced thing is possibly one of his lowerst quality efforts yet – calling it a comedy or even a movie belonging to a genre would be kind of stretching it.

Based on the result, we can deduce that the screenwriters – Sandler is one of them – didn’t really know what to do with not a bad idea of following a talent agent’s life and U.S. showbiz in general.

Also, they didn’t know how to create a story containing more than basic Sandler cliches which we have had enough already during 20+ years he’s been a movie star. Some cliches, like the main character bumbling most of the time instead of speaking, are downright pathetic by now already.

And for a „comedy“ lasting for more than two hours, there are only a couple of amusing ideas, including Terry Crews as a WWF wrestler and Beavis & Butt-head harassing the titular hero by phone (to hear that you have to endure til the very end, or just start the movie when the end credits start). They can’t even make fun about 1990’s life properly!

To add insult to the injury, despite all the (semi-)famous faces that joined for cameos or small parts, the makers seemed to have no idea how to use them in any exciting way.

There’s a probably some record breaking myriad of showbiz talent involved, not to mention a bunch of has-beens, Sandler regulars and/or comedians who belong to his circle (excluding Steve Buscemi, sadly. How come they couldn’t get something funny out of that?

And yet despite all this, Sandler comedies still work for me after all these years and sharply declining in quality during the 2010’s. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I still find him endearing somehow.

„Sandy Wexler“ is the third of five Netflix-produced movies that Sandler has agreed to. Let’s see what happens when this sweet deal runs out.