Jay Kelly: A sublime character study

Jay Kelly (2025) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.14.25

The opening Sylvia Plath quote says it all:

 

“It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It’s much easier to be somebody else, or nobody at all.”

 

Flanked by publicist Liz (Laura Dern, center left) and best friend/handler Ron (Adam
Sandler, center right), Jay Kelly (George Clooney) cheerful interrupts his morning to
sign autographs for adoring fans.

Jay Kelly (George Clooney) has it all: a long and successful film career; a devoted entourage, including best friend and handler Ron Sukenick (Adam Sandler); and the admiration and respect of fans, friends and professional colleagues.

 

He is one with Gary Cooper, Cary Grant and Robert De Niro: shapeshifters and chameleons of identity, with faces that represent something personal to millions.

 

But.

 

Jay’s nature, even when the cameras are off, remains a pose; he has no sense of self. His relationship with daughters Jessica (Riley Keough) and Daisy (Grace Edwards) is strained at best, estranged at worst. They’ve grown up seeing him repeatedly forsake them for the work: another movie, another months-long absence. Their mother and Jay’s other exes are distant memories.

 

He takes Ron for granted, failing to recognize the strain this keeps putting on his family.

 

Jay is selfish … and he’s so far gone, he’s incapable of recognizing this.

 

To be sure, he’s affable, suave and generous with the public; he’s also wheedling and persuasive, and knows how to get his way. After all, he has been doing it for decades. (This is George Clooney, after all; the man exudes charm and savoir faire the way the rest of us breathe.)

 

And yet …

 

Of late, Jay has begun to relive past choices: confronted by ghosts from his past, awakened to the shallowness of his present. And with this rising awareness comes a feeling he can’t quite identify:

 

Regret.

 

This plays out in director Noah Baumbach’s masterfully composed film, which enchants from its initial scene: cinematographer Linus Sandgren’s stunning, single-take tracking shot that follows the set-up and shooting of Jay’s final scene in his new movie, Eight Men from Now. Baumbach’s script, co-written with Emily Mortimer, is a masterful blend of drama, gentle humor, angst and character dynamics, brought to life by richly nuanced performances from Clooney and Sandler. Both are sure bets for Academy Award nominations.

 

(I understand the eyebrow lift. Adam Sandler, in a subtly shaded straight role? Hey, watch this film, then get back to me.)

Uncut Gems: Badly flawed

Uncut Gems (2019) • View trailer 
One star. Rated R, for pervasive profanity and strong language, violence, sexual candor and fleeting drug use
By Derrick Bang

Ick.

This thoroughly unpleasant waste of time isn’t really a movie; it’s a disgusting experience on par with military latrine duty.

Doing his best to please a first-time customer with plenty of cash, Diamond District shop
owner Howard (Adam Sandler) hauls out a truly hideous example of bling.

Fifteen minutes in, you’ll feel the need for a shower. Once the atrociously self-indulgent, 135-minute slog concludes, you’ll want to scrub off at least two layers of skin.

Class, can we spell l-o-a-t-h-s-o-m-e?

Hollywood tends to be oddly tolerant, when stand-up comics-turned-actors stray into dramatic territory. In fairness, the results sometimes justify such a charitable attitude; we need look no further than Melissa McCarthy, who delivered such sensitively layered work in last year’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Alas, Adam Sandler scarcely deserves such a free pass, for this repugnant travesty.

It feels as though every single minute of Uncut Gems is spent watching thoroughly unpleasant characters scream at each other, every other word of such outbursts punctuated by F-bombs and racial epithets. Co-writer/directors Benny and Josh Safdie — New York-based indie filmmakers — give us nobody to like or admire, even in a vicariously mean-spirited sense; nobody among this assortment of mopes, creeps, thugs and degenerates is worthy of God’s precious gift of life.

This film’s media champions — and there are many — apparently are impressed by its “authentic street” attitude, while conveniently overlooking the fact that, Sandler aside, nobody else is remotely credible with what seems to be entirely improvised dialog. The so-called acting is stiff, forced and shrill, defined by little beyond swagger.

Ironically, the best performances come from Keith Williams Richards and Tommy Kominik, as Phil and Nico, a couple of heavies who radiate lethal menace while saying very little. (We’ll get back to them.)

But okay, credit where due: Cinematographer Darius Khondji and editors Ronald Bronstein and Benny Safdie definitely catch the rhythm and flow, hustle and bustle, hurly and burly of New York City’s colorful Diamond District. A-plus for atmosphere.

As for the rest…

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation — A monstrous good time

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.13.18

The jokes never get old.

Many of the sight gags and laugh lines in this new outing are recycled from the two previous films, but we can’t complain when the result remains so entertaining. It has long been fun to exploit the absurdity of classic monsters, going all the way back to 1948’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. 

To his surprise, Dracula falls head-over-heels in love with cruise ship captain Ericka,
little realizing that he needs to know a lot more about her heritage.

This is director Genndy Tartakovsky’s third crack at this series’ fast-paced humor in a jugular vein, and he has the formula down pat: He and co-writer Michael McCullers divide this new adventure into distinct chapters, each of which presents unique opportunities for hilarity.

While, at the same time, each enhances the (mild) suspense of the story’s core plot.

A brief prologue mines Bram Stoker territory, by depicting the long-running battle between the resourceful Dracula (voiced by Adam Sandler) and various members of the Van Helsing clan, all of whom have devoted their lives to eradicating monsters. But as we move past the 19th and 20th centuries, and into modern times, all monsters have become sheltered beneath Dracula’s protective cape — as the two previous films have established — where they can safely enjoy themselves in his Hotel Transylvania.

On top of which, Dracula always has been able to make short work of the various Van Helsings, including the most recent, and most persistent: Abraham Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan).

Happily ensconced in his hotel, Dracula’s busy schedule has compromised his ability to spend time with vampire daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez), her gonzo-mellow human husband Johnny (Andy Samberg), and their precocious 5-year-old son Dennis (Asher Blinkoff). The latter, in turn, can’t stand to be parted from his elephant-sized puppy, Tinkles (who, fortunately, doesn’t live down to his name).

Worried that her father is wearing himself thin, and is unable to spend quality time with friends and family, Mavis secretly books a vacation for the entire gang — Drac’s Pack — on a luxury monster cruise ship. Although initially unimpressed by the notion of spending time on a massive “hotel on the water,” Dracula comes around when he unexpectedly “zings” — the monster equivalent of love at first sight — with the ship’s captain, the dimple-chinned Ericka (Kathryn Hahn).

Little do Dracula and his friends know, however, that Ericka is a Van Helsing, and the cruise actually is an elaborate trap designed to destroy all monsters. Finally. Forever.

Pixels: Game over!

Pixels (2015) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for occasional vulgarity
By Derrick Bang

Movies emerge from all sorts of sources.

Back in the Golden Age, adaptations came exclusively from popular novels and the theater stage. As we moved into the television age, iconic network characters leaped to the big screen, and then the dam truly burst, with high-concept projects concocted from songs, comic books, board games, computer games and even theme park attractions.

With Earth under attack by rather strange invaders, our heroes — from left, Violet
(Michelle Monaghan), Brenner (Adam Sandler) and Ludlow (Josh Gad) — confront one
crazy opponent after another. And yes, that's Q*bert on the far right: apparently on the
side of the angels.

 Most of those latter efforts, it must be mentioned, didn’t amount to much. No surprise there: Novels and plays contain rich narrative material constructed by writers who devoted a great deal of care to nit-picky details like plot logic and character development. Computer games offer little more than pop-culture images. (Anybody remember enduring Super Mario Bros.? Or either of the two Mortal Kombat bombs?)

Pixels derives from a 2010 short film of the same title by French writer/director Patrick Jean. It’s readily available via YouTube, Vimeo and various other Internet sources, and I heartily recommend the experience. It’s far more satisfying, at slightly more than 2 minutes (!), than this 98-minute, big-screen exercise in brain-dead chaos.

Scripters Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling clearly borrowed heavily from the original Ghostbusters template, while acknowledging the current resurgence of interest in early-gen computer games such as Asteroids and Pac-Man. But the Ghostbusters riffs are strongest, down to our heroes’ similar uniforms and even stance, while using similar high-tech weapons to battle this story’s unlikely celestial invaders.

The presence of Dan Aykroyd, in an early scene, suggests his approval of this acknowledgment of past glories.

Trouble is, Ghostbusters was a vastly superior film, with a much better-developed storyline. Pixels is random and clumsy, its under-developed characters graceless and often left to stand about, as if wondering what to do next. The overall narrative is so poorly executed that it frequently feels as if different sets of writers contributed various scenes, leaving director Chris Columbus to stitch things together.

A task at which he failed.

I had to remind myself that Columbus helmed iconic films such as Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, the first two Harry Potter entries and the big-screen version of Rent. Then again, Columbus also brought us lesser efforts such as Bicentennial Man and I Love You, Beth Cooper, so he’s not immune to errors in judgment. Or skill.

But Pixels, without question, is the nadir of his (thus far) 30-year career.

Which is a shame, because this film’s first act shows promise. A 1982 prologue introduces us to young gamers Brenner (Anthony Ippolito) and Cooper (Jared Riley), who marvel at the delights to be found within their town’s first video game emporium. Their tag-along younger friend, Ludlow (Jacob Shinder), is content to fall in love/lust with a pixilated ninja babe dubbed Lady Lisa.

Brenner proves to be a natural, working his way up to a championship match against an arrogant young visitor named Eddie (Andrew Bambridge), who has dubbed himself “The Fire-Blaster.” The match is filmed, with the footage inserted by NASA into a deep-space probes: one of many examples, to entities Out There, of what Earth is like at that moment in time.

Flash-forward to the modern day. Cooper (now Kevin James) has, rather unexpectedly, become President of the United States. (One wonders who was inept enough to have lost that election.) He’s a meatball best known for embarrassing photo ops, but James nonetheless makes him somewhat endearing, in an oafish way.

Ludlow (Josh Gad) has become a conspiracy theory whacko (“Kennedy fired first!”) who still carries a torch for the imaginary Lady Lisa. Brenner (Adam Sandler) has blossomed into the ultimate under-achiever, as a roving tech nerd who installs home entertainment systems.

In that capacity, Brenner encounters Violet (Michelle Monaghan), a recently jilted wife, and her young son, Matty (Matt Lintz). The subsequent meet-cute connection is mutual all around, and also endearing: further proof that Sandler, when held in check, can be goofily charming while still delivering one-line zingers.

But there’s no time to explore romantic possibilities, thanks to a crisis that erupts halfway around the world, as a U.S. military base is attacked by free-flying whatzits that emit laser-like bursts which transform everything — buildings, people, the landscape — into small, multi-colored cubes of various sizes.

The assault is accompanied by a weird musical fanfare that Cooper immediately recognizes, when he views footage of the event. He summons Brenner to be sure, and they agree: Earth has just been attacked by the fictitious entities of the early 1980s computer game Galaga.

Ludlow supplies the next essential bit of information, rather mysteriously inserted into an old VHS tape he’d been watching. (No cable or satellite channels in his house; that’s how the government monitors people!) Apparently, that 1982 NASA tape was intercepted by an alien race that viewed the gaming footage as an act of war, and has created warriors based on those games, and sent them to Earth. The “rules” are spelled out by re-created video manifestations of characters from early 1980s TV shows.

It’s a duel to potential planetary destruction, with Earth granted three “lives,” as in classic arcade games. We’ve already lost the first life, and of course we lose the second after an assault in India, nobody having believed our heroes.

Then, finally acknowledging the inevitable, the first fair-fight clash takes place in England’s Hyde Park, with our newly jump-suited “Arcaders” taking on the rapidly descending Centipede. And, oh yes, it proves a fair fight thanks to weapons hastily devised by the tech wizards at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where — imagine the coincidence! — Violet happens to be a lieutenant colonel.

The old “gang” is fully assembled with the arrival of the smarmy and larcenous Eddie (Peter Dinklage), rescued from a long prison stretch and promised various things if he’ll help.

Which is right about the point that Columbus loses any semblance of control over this whacked-out storyline. The second act is bonkers, but at least visually impressive; effects supervisor Matthew Butler enthusiastically embraced the challenge of bringing all these 1980s video games into our real world. He and production designer Peter Wenham definitely hold our attention, even as things become progressively sillier.

The third act, however, defies description.

By this point, Herlihy and Dowling have abandoned any effort at coherence; they just toss stuff into the mix, like spaghetti hurled against a wall, to see if anything will stick.

Brian Cox and Sean Bean wander aimlessly through a few scenes, as a belligerent American admiral and an equally confrontational British SAS officer. The DARPA tech team includes a glass-brained android (Tom McCarthy) who’s just sorta taken for granted, as if such a breakthrough were commonplace.

Ludlow naturally comes face to face with an evil electronic personification of his beloved Lady Lisa (Ashley Benson), but what happens next is eye-rolling even by this numb-nuts film’s standards. An inappropriately chatty Q*bert, presented to our heroes as a “trophy,” seems oddly benevolent, given that he (it?) is a typical (?) denizen of this marauding alien race.

And if you expect any answers, after the final climactic battle, forget it; Herlihy and Dowling don’t even try to wrap things up. The final half hour is simply a mess.

Sandler holds things together as well as possible, and his calm, decent-guy charisma is a welcome counterpoint to — as the most obvious example — Gad’s overly shrill, shrieking handling of Ludlow. Eddie’s vulgar tendencies are wholly out of place in this dumb but mostly good-natured fantasy, with Dinklage’s earthy dialogue solely responsible for the otherwise harmless script’s PG-13 elements. The character simply doesn’t work, nor can Dinklage save him.

Lintz, also refreshingly serene, shares several engaging scenes with Sandler. Jack Fulton gets a hearty laugh as a young British lad who uncorks a choice one-liner. Jane Krakowski is completely wasted as Cooper’s wife, and thus the U.S. First Lady; Lainie Kazan has an equally useless role as Ludlow’s grandmother. Serena Williams and Martha Stewart appears as themselves. (Don’t ask.)

And — could it really be? — yes, Matt Frewer gets another shot at his own bit of 1980s pop-culture glory.

I’m intrigued by this film’s proximity to 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph, which also gave fresh life to characters from long-dormant games such as BurgerTime, Paperboy, Dig Dug and, yes, Q*bert. Indeed, little Q*bert is more easily recognized today, than he was three decades ago. Nostalgia sure takes us in strange directions.

A condensed and more intelligently scripted version of these events would have made a great 45-minute episode of the recent TV series Warehouse 13. But at more than twice that length, Columbus’ film loses its way — and its audience — long before its looney-tunes denouement. This is brain-dead, flashy Hollywood trash at its worst: every bit as mindless as the phosphor-dot spaceships that marched down the screen during a round of Space Invaders.

And not nearly as much fun.

Blended: Pulverized

Blended (2014) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for crude content, sexual candor and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

A modest but fairly decent romantic comedy lurks somewhere within the clumsy, bloated mess of this movie, but it’s damn hard to find.

Years removed from the dating scene, Jim (Adam Sandler) sets up a blind date with
Lauren (Drew Barrymore) at the local Hooters. First impressions aren't so hot; second
impressions are even worse. So, naturally, these two will be seeing a lot more of each
other. Because, otherwise, we wouldn't have a movie (not necessarily a bad thing).

As often has been the case with Adam Sandler’s recent films, the actor seems at war with his own conflicting sensibilities: a perceived need to reward fans who expect the vulgar, gross-out slapstick of his early career; and an honest desire to veer toward gentler, family-friendly material.

The results can be awkward, to say the least, as we’ve already seen in his two Grown Ups entries, each of which tried for aw-shucks, feel-good moments that simply didn’t gel with the sexist, moronic “humor” targeted more specifically at arrested adolescent males.

You’ll find the same unwieldy mix in Blended, Sandler’s third — and least satisfying — pairing with co-star Drew Barrymore. I can’t help wondering if Sandler views Barrymore as his lucky token, given that their first collaboration, 1998’s The Wedding Singer, remains one of his most satisfying films. (Mind you, we’re still not talking Shakespeare; a “superior” Sandler comedy doesn’t raise the bar very high.)

Their sophomore team-up — 2004’s 50 First Dates — wasn’t quite as successful, but its virtues still overshadowed the coarse and tasteless elements that by then had become a stronger part of Sandler’s oeuvre.

All of which brings us to Blended, which can be viewed as something of a cinematic Hail Mary play, coming in the wake of gawdawful bombs such as Jack and Jill and That’s My Boy. (Frankly, Sandler’s only truly entertaining movie of late was HotelTransylvania, and it starred only his voice.) Unfortunately, Blended is yet another flick that doesn’t know what it wants to be, when it grows up: a flaw directly attributed to the haphazard script from Ivan Menchell and Clare Sera, making inept big-screen writing debuts.

The results are all over the map, and director Frank Coraci doesn’t help much. Although he helmed the aforementioned Wedding Singer, more recently he has been responsible for the numb-nuts Kevin James comedies Zookeeper and Here Comes the Boom. So let’s just say that Coraci’s tendencies aren’t likely to support any of Sandler’s efforts to channel his kinder, gentler self.

Hotel Transylvania: Monster Mash

Hotel Transylvania (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG, for mild rude humor and some scary images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.28.12

Funniest sight-gag I’ve seen in years: The Invisible Man attempting to convey a clue during a spirited round of charades.

Hotel interloper Jonathon, left, concealing his human-ness behind pale makeup and
an orange hairstyle, can't help falling in love with Mavis, Dracula's adorable daughter ...
and the attraction definitely is mutual. But this can't be a good idea, and Dracula
himself would much rather see his little girl stick to (ahem) her own kind.

Hotel Transylvania is generously laden with similar knee-slappers, many piling one atop the next in the rat-a-tat-tat manner of a classic Road Runner cartoon. But this is no seven-minute short; director Genndy Tartakovsky and editor Catherine Apple successfully maintain an exhilarating pace without sacrificing the character elements necessary to hold our interest.

It’s an impressive feat, no less so when considering the involvement of five credited writers: Peter Baynham, Robert Smigel, Todd Durham, Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman. That many cooks generally spoil the magic potion, but in this case everybody’s sensibilities mesh nicely. The result is a light-hearted spoof of familiar movie monster traditions, blended with wry takes on young love and an unusually extreme generation gap.

Long, long ago, in a haunted forest far, far away, Dracula (voiced by Adam Sandler) constructed a lavish “five-stake resort” that he dubbed Hotel Transylvania: a posh refuge for monsters and their families to vacation, far from curious — and potentially dangerous — eyes. As has become typical of our 21st century re-evaluations of fantasy creatures, these poor monsters are the world’s maligned and misunderstood, hunted and killed by the humans who fear and hate them.

Bearing that last thought in mind, Dracula’s massive sanctuary also has been designed as a place where his daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez), can grow up safely. Dracula has particular reason for this parental concern; a century and change ago, his beloved wife — Mavis’ mother — was killed by just such a human mob.

But Mavis is celebrating her 118th birthday, and — just like the tower-bound Rapunzel, in 2010’s Tangled — she yearns to explore and experience the outside world. Until now, Dracula has managed to delay her desire, in part through the distraction of ever more elaborate birthday parties.

This one is destined to be no exception, with a guest list that includes Frankenstein (Kevin James) and his brassy wife, Eunice (Fran Drescher); Wayne (Steve Buscemi) and Wanda (Molly Shannon), a couple of loving werewolves who have produced litter after litter of pups; Griffin, the Invisible Man (David Spade); Murray (CeeLo Green), a boisterous, jive-talking mummy; and Quasimodo (Jon Lovitz), the hotel’s temperamental head chef, never seen without his loyal rat assistant, Esmeralda.

Grown-Ups: It grows on us

Grown Ups (2010) • View trailer for Grown Ups
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for vulgar humor and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.1.10
Buy DVD: Grown Ups • Buy Blue-Ray: Grown Ups (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo)

Imagine my surprise: Despite occasional dollops of bad taste, this film actually has a sweet and warm-hearted center. 

Indeed, the good-natured character bonding is so at odds with the flashes of vulgarity, that the latter moments seem inserted as an afterthought, solely to appease the potty-minded members of Adam Sandler's fan base.

If only things could be as simple as they were, back when everybody
was 12 years old: Five best friends -- from left, Kurt (Chris Rock),
Marcus (David Spade), Eric (Kevin James), Rob (Rob Schneider) and
Lenny (Adam Sandler) -- find just enough of their youthful selves to
make their reunion worth the various tensions with respective family
members, in Grown Ups.

Mind you, a few of these "gags" are stop-the-film dreadful, most particularly a running bit involving a 4-year-old boy — who can't act a lick — who still uses his mother as a wet-nurse. That joke is wincingly awful the first time, and it doesn't get any better with repetition. Far too much repetition. 

Fortunately, the core storyline in Grown Ups generally rises above such crudeness. Indeed, this script — from Sandler and Fred Wolf — is the gentlest comedy Sandler has done since The Wedding Singer, and that's a good thing. Sandler's at his best when held back and allowed to resemble a genuine human being. 

And that's the film's other miracle: Everybody is held back, even the almost always unpalatable Rob Schneider. 

(I could argue, just in passing, that the worst thing Sandler ever did was give his good — but wholly untalented — buddy Schneider a career. I've always respected folks who stand by their friends, but must this be done at the expense of our suffering?) 

This film's previews certainly suggested that Sandler, Schneider, Chris Rock, David Spade and Kevin James would simply run amok for roughly two hours, which is all Dennis Dugan generally does with a cast, when he directs. (Anybody out there remember the ghastly travesty of You Don't Mess with the Zohan?) Somehow, though, this story inspired even Dugan to be a better version of himself. 

Wonder of wonders, the result is a better film ... even if the characters rarely rise above two-dimensional cliches. 

Funny People: Far from amusing

Funny People (2009) • View trailer for Funny People
1.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for nudity, sexual candor and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.31.09
Buy DVD: Funny People• Buy Blu-Ray: Funny People (2-Disc Unrated Collector's Edition) [Blu-ray]

Wow ... what a tedious, self-indulgent mess.

Filmmakers who decide to become "meaningful" must be regarded with eyebrow-raised skepticism, because it's a sure sign that somebody is taking himself much too seriously. The situation inevitably occurs because the artist in question — often a director — has made buckets of money in the recent past, and therefore has the clout to be green-lighted for what amounts to an insufferable vanity project.

When Clarke (Eric Bana, far right) returns home early from a business trip, his
wife, Laura (Leslie Mann), stumbles to find a reasonable explanation to justify
the presence of long-ago lover George (Adam Sandler, left) and tag-along Ira
(Seth Rogen) in their home. Because Clarke is such an idiot -- a failing that
afflicts every character in this film -- it's not that hard a sell.

Which, in a world where poetic irony rules, flops.

Think back to Steven Spielberg, who stumbled big time with 1941, after having been such a media darling with Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Recall James Cameron, parlaying his two Terminator films into the mooningly melodramatic The Abyss. Or Barry Levinson, following Rain Man and Bugsy with the jaw-droppingly dreadful Toys.

Judd Apatow's shtick always has skirted the ragged edge of cruelty, and Funny People is distastefully mean-spirited. This is a sordid little tale of morally compromised troglodytes who are intended, in Apatow's imagination, to be sympathetic protagonists in his interminable, clumsily written narrative.

They are not sympathetic. They do not deserve happiness or anything else that might be construed as a "reward." As a group, they begin this film with the ethics of snake-oil salesmen, and their bad behavior remains consistent until a thoroughly unpersuasive epilogue.

They do not learn; they do not respect even their so-called best friends; they lack sense — common, good or any other kind — and carry on like spoiled children.

All of them. All the time.

Normally, such misanthropic behavior would be held up for low comedy, as was the case with Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up, both of which blended hilariously coarse dialogue with a sweet romantic underbelly. We tolerated and laughed at the former because the latter was a satisfying payoff: Steve Carell genuinely fell in love, Katherine Heigl did right by her unborn child.

Funny People, in great contrast, overflows with so much contrived melancholy and faux poignance that it becomes the sort of purple melodrama that Tom Servo and the 'bots from Mystery Science Theater 3000 would have roasted with glee.

Worse yet, this film gives us no satisfaction: nothing to be pleased with, as the lights finally rise after 146 interminable minutes.

You Don't Mess with the Zohan: A true mess

You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008) • View trailer for You Don't Mess with the Zohan
Zero stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, which is a total crock, for nudity, profanity and unrelenting sexual vulgarity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.5.08
Buy DVD: You Don't Mess with the Zohan • Buy Blu-Ray: You Don't Mess With the Zohan (Unrated + BD Live) [Blu-ray]

Goodness, such a wealth of options...

In his race to the bottom, Adam Sandler has done what I wouldn't have believed conceivable: He has bested Eddie Murphy, Rob Schneider and Will Ferrell.

Having abandoned his career as an Israeli Mossad commando, Zohan Dvir (Adam
Sandler) winds up in New York, embracing his secret passion to become a hair
stylist. Needless to say, his past catches up with him.

Or...

Impossible as it sounds, Sandler actually has made the most wretched film of his career. It's almost as if he indulged in a contest with himself, to unleash something even more unspeakably dreadful than Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds.

Or...

I should have known that any movie with a substantial speaking appearance by Mariah Carey would be a dog.

Or...

You Don't Mess with the Zohan may not be the year's worst movie ... but it'll do until that one comes along.

Let's go with No. 4.

I have no pity for Sandler's fans, who at least know what to expect. But the notion of unwary mainstream patrons across these great United States — even one unsuspecting naïf — innocently paying good money with the expectation of enjoying some goofy slapstick, is enough to make me cringe.

Demanding their money back won't be sufficient compensation. Hell, they should get Columbia pictures to pay them ... and on a sliding scale: an exponentially larger payoff for every additional minute spent enduring this train wreck.

I'd like to think it could be possible to center a comedy around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict; humor has a way of bridging even the most entrenched cultural divide. But Zohan is so poisonously tasteless, so unrelentingly vulgar and racist, that I can see it becoming one of the bullet-points in the next peace talks. ("You execute Adam Sandler, and burn every copy of that Godforsaken movie, or we don't even come to the table!")

Its status as an unredeemable turkey aside, Zohan also has the distinction of proving, once and for all, that the idiots who work for the MPAA are just messing with us. I've long felt their ratings were arbitrary and temperamental, but this is ridiculous. They really do indulge big-studio productions while unfairly reserving their "real" scrutiny for indie pictures.

Granted, this tawdry flick doesn't contain any F-bombs or bare breasts — plenty of naked male butts, though — but otherwise it's the most mercilessly vulgar production I've seen in quite awhile ... and yes, I'm even comparing it to what the Farrelly brothers unleash. The notion that this crude trash could skate by with a PG-13 is simply insane. It's not just wincingly awful; it's lose-your-lunch awful.