R, 1 hr. 54 min. Directed By:
Sean Anders, John Morris.
Release Date: Jun 15, 2012.
I was angry at Adam Sandler. Still angry about Jack & Jill. I don’t go
in to an Adam Sandler movie expecting anything but sophomoric humor centering
around alcohol, sex, and probably fart jokes, and it astounded me that Sandler’s
last release didn’t even measure up to those pretty low standards. That’s
My Boy did. I think I mentioned that
part of the success of this movie would depend on people being able to get
enough entertainment out of it that it would serve as apology for Jack & Jill. For me it managed to do that.
That being said, this is probably
going to be a very polarizing movie. If
you are one of those people that either never finds Sandler funny, or you only
watch tepid melodramas based on real life, or you can’t find anything funny
about getting drunk, having sex, or the occasional fart that sounds like a
chainsaw. Take a pass on this. If you use words like “vulgar” or “crude” to
describe comedies with any regularity, take a pass. If you’re going to get bent out of shape by
some taboo subjects that are purely make believe, take a pass. Otherwise, you might find some entertainment
value in That’s My Boy.
What did I like in this? I won’t say it’s a great movie, but it is
frequently funny and consistently so, so it’s not like the broken clock
syndrome. Milo Ventimiglia is doing a
role the likes of which I haven’t seen him do before. He’s funny, and clearly doesn’t take this
seriously. He wasn’t like James Franco
in Your Highness, either, where he
needed to take it more seriously. Adam
Sandler was okay, but I got tired of hearing the F bomb and “wicked” come out
of his mouth every thirty seconds. Andy
Samberg was also pretty good, although he seems to have mellowed. A LOT.
It’s not a bad thing, but he didn’t have the energy I expected based on other movies I’ve seen him in.
But mostly, I liked the two
middle-aged women sitting behind me.
They were like a cross between Tyler Perry as Medea and those two grumpy
old guys from The Muppet Show. I knew I was in trouble when the trailer to Hit & Run appeared and they lost
their shit when there’s the implication that Bradley Cooper’s character
survives prison rape. The entire movie
this time around was peppered with their increasingly entertaining comments, my
personal favorite being “Ooh, girl. You
know I wanna take a bite out of that white boy’s ass (talking about Milo Ventimiglia’s
nude scene).” My second favorite was
early in the movie when they scream their shock that the teacher is
pregnant. It was easily one of the best
examples of human stupidity (not the movie, the women) that I’ve ever
seen. If you’re going to a movie where
you KNOW the subject matter is the relationship between a father and son where
the boy was the product of an inappropriate relationship between a boy and his
teacher… you shouldn’t be shouting “Oh my GOD!” when the teacher appears at her
trial well in to her pregnancy. But,
they did make the funny moments funnier (they also made me spit up Coke through
my nose twice).
So I recommend this with some
caution. It will help if you have one of
those pontificating fools (or maybe even two) who feels the need to comment on
everything that happens. If you can’t
manage that, you won’t miss anything by waiting for video.
