Big Daddy Review
by Stephen Sills (sills AT pipeline DOT com)July 5th, 1999
Big Daddy
A review by Stephen Sills
Rated PG-13 (crude humor, language)
I was genuinely surprised by this film. That almost all of the attempted drama completely fails is no surprise. Strangely enough, though, most of the humor fails too. Adam Sandler is by no means a great actor, but at least he can normally be counted on to be consistently funny. Save for a few choice moments, his performance is rather subdued here, and most of the one-liners and verbal humor fall relatively flat. This film lacks the charm of "The Wedding Singer" and the stupid, albeit occasionally hilarious, humor of "The Water Boy." In short, it's a pretty drab experience.
Sandler plays Sonny Koufax, a law school graduate who has amassed an obscenely large fortune from a frivolous lawsuit. Having wisely invested the money to the point where he can live off of it, he spends his days lounging around his apartment, venturing out into the real world once a week as a toll booth attendant. Sonny's perfectly happy with his existence, but his girlfriend, Vanessa (Kristy Swanson), is fed up with his immaturity and wants to move on "to the next level" of his life.
Sonny begins to see her point after she leaves him, and it is reinforced when his roommate decides to move on to that next level and successfully proposes to his girlfriend, Corinne (Leslie Mann), a ditsy, airheaded former Hooters girl. Getting married to a stupid, big-breasted bimbo doesn't really strike me as a sign of maturity, but it does to Sonny, who finally realizes that he has to do something to prove his worth to Vanessa.
That thing comes in the form of Julian (Cole and Dylan Sprouse), a young boy who is literally dropped off at his doorstep. Julian is Sonny's roommate's illegitimate son. His roommate, conveniently enough, is out of town, so Sonny decides to take responsibility for Julian while he is away. He does this for a while, enjoys it, and decides that he'd like the situation to be permanent. Masquerading as his roommate, he officially gains guardianship of Julian and attempts to use his newfound responsibility as proof to Vanessa that he's ready to proceed with his life. Unfortunately for Sonny, she has already found someone else, thus leaving him to care for Julian alone. The romanticism of the situation quickly fades when the kid starts having normal kid problems (bed-wetting, a need for continuous attention, and a lust for sweets to name a few). Needless to say, Sonny doesn't handle the situation very well.
"Big Daddy" is occasionally funny, but it lacks the big laughs necessary to make a truly successful comedy. Sandler's comedy works when it's totally silly and stupid, a fact that was fully realized in "The Water Boy." The bonding scenes between Sonny and Julian are somewhat amusing, but Sandler simply isn't a good enough actor to pull something like this off very well. This might seem strange, but Tom Hanks would probably be far better suited for this role.
The film is also bogged down by some embarrassingly smarmy moments that further dull it's already not-too-sharp comedic edge. While I can appreciate some occasional gratuitous sentiment (I was actually somewhat affected by the silly emotional scenes in "Armageddon," for Pete's sake), this film goes, way, way too far. The creators seem to think that they have a credible drama on their hands when they simply do not.
"Big Daddy" features one of the strangest product placements that I've ever seen. The product in question is the Hooters restaurant chain, but the film is certainly not complementary of their waitresses. The bimboish nature of Corinne's job is continually brought up and joked at, but this is done so frequently that it gets incredibly old, and is obviously a product placement when viewed with the fact that the movie ends in a Hooters restaurant. I've never seen a product placement that ridicules the product that it is advertising.
In the end, "Big Daddy" is occasionally amusing, but not enough so to get a recommendation from me. Granted, it's not nearly as disgusting as "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," but it's also not as funny. As such, they both even out to the same score.
** out of ****
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