That’s My Boy, 2012.
Directed by Sean Anders.
Starring Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Leighton Meester, Will Forte, Blake Clark, Tony Orlando, Ciara, James Caan, Milo Ventimiglia and Nick Swardson.
SYNOPSIS:
While still in his teens, Donny (Adam Sandler) fathered a son, Todd (Andy Samberg), and raised him as a single parent until Todd’s 18th birthday. Now, after not seeing each other for years, Todd’s world comes crashing down on the eve of his wedding when an uninvited Donny suddenly shows up.
Oh Adam Sandler, why do you keep doing this to yourself? Despite what most people would say, Sandler is capable of making a good movie. He’s made his fair share of good comedies (Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer) and he’s proven that he can genuinely act in movies like Reign Over Me and Punch-Drunk Love. Sandler’s last few movies have been some of the worst in his career and now he’s attempting to go a little raunchier with That’s My Boy. Can an R-rated Adam Sandler movie return him to comedy form?
The answer is absolutely not. That’s My Boy has Sandler playing Donnie Berger, a washed up former child star whose claim to fame was that he knocked up his teacher when he was only in grade school. Now thirty years later, Donnie is going to go to prison for not paying his taxes unless he can come up with $43,000. TV personalty Randall Morgan will pay him $50,000 if he can get his son, Han Solo (Andy Samberg), to go with him to see his mother in prison and reunite the family. Only problem is that Donnie hasn’t seen his son in years and he despises him. Han, who has changed his name to Todd Petersen, is getting married in the next few days and Donnie sees this as the perfect opportunity to get back on his son’s good side and convince him to come with him to visit his mother.
What can I say about That’s My Boy that you can’t already get from watching the trailer? Well for one, the movie is overly long. There is no reason this should be almost two hours long, thirty minutes could have been taken out of this movie easily. Another thing that just makes this movie plain bad is that hardly any of the jokes work at all. Sandler is doing another one of his voices for the character in this movie and it’s almost as annoying as his Little Nicky voice. The bad jokes combined with that voice make it even worse and it doesn’t help that Andy Samberg and the rest of the cast add nothing either. Aside from Samberg ,you have Leighton Meester, James Caan, Blake Clark, Milo Ventimiglia, Will Forte, Tony Orlando, Nick Swardson and Ciara all involved and none of them provide anything funny at all, which is a shame.
There is one saving grace here and it comes in the form of a couple of cameos – something that seems to happen a lot in Adam Sandler comedies. You know you don’t have much going for your movie when cameo appearances from Vanilla Ice and Todd Bridges are the best part. Vanilla Ice plays himself as an old friend of Donnie’s from when they were both popular. He comes in for a ten to fifteen minute sequence which is actually quite humorous, while Todd Bridges only shows up twice but he – just like Vanilla Ice – provides a few laughs in his small amount of screen time. Too bad a Susan Sarandon cameo amounts to nothing at all other than to have her be in the movie.
I’m surprised That’s My Boy didn’t spark up a bit more controversy because of it’s subject matter. The main plot is basically about child rape and later on (not to spoil anything) the subject of incest is brought into the story. Both are subjects that don’t belong in comedies and neither are handled in a humorous way – they come off as embarrassing, just like this entire movie. None of the other humor works here either; it’s just typical Sandler movie humor as well as an overuse of gross out comedy that doesn’t work at all. Gross out humor is very hard to pull off, and here they don’t even try to do it well.
That’s My Boy is another Adam Sandler movie that just fails to showcase any of his talents, or the talents of anyone involved. A couple of cameos do make for a few laughs, but it’s not enough to save this train wreck.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Jake Peffer
Originally published October 17, 2012. Updated April 11, 2018.
