Big Daddy Review
by David Sunga (zookeeper AT criticzoo DOT com)June 26th, 1999
BIG DADDY (1999)
Rating: 1.5 stars (out of 4.0)
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Key to rating system:
2.0 stars - Debatable
2.5 stars - Some people may like it
3.0 stars - I liked it
3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie
4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out
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A Movie Review by David Sunga
Directed by: Dennis Dugan
Written by: by Steve Franks, Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler
Starring: Adam Sandler, Joey Lauren Adams, Jon Stewart
Synopsis:
Sonny Koufax (Adam Sandler) is a rich, childish, angry man who has just been dumped by his girlfriend Vanessa (Kristy Swanson). In a bid to impress Vanessa Sonny impersonates his friend Kevin (Jon Stewart) and adopts a 5 year old boy named Julian (Cole and Dylan Sprouse) while Kevin is on an overseas trip. Under Sonny's supervision Julian soon learns to lie to women, tell people how he "wipes his ass," throw tantrums, and scream for his "God damned" treats. Self centered, Julian breaks a school classmate's arm without apologizing or even realizing he has done anything wrong. Meanwhile Sonny bribes Julian with sugary talk, food, toys, and flashy promises in order to get the kid to perform. Not surprisingly the government takes Julian away from Sonny's incompetent supervision, and this leads to a custody battle.
Opinion:
It's a movie about an embittered creep teaching a little kid to be a jerk, and we all get cheap laughs because for 90 minutes the innocent kindergartner never finds out what it means when he mimics all the bad boy behavior. That's the essence of BIG DADDY.
But there's a bigger issue involved: marketing. Movies that are rated PG and PG-13 are heavily marketed towards children of preteen age and below. On TV, film clips advertise these movies as family-friendly hit comedies. Then when you go see them they turn out to be either raunchy sex acts like Austin Powers with characters named Fat Bastard - - or BIG DADDY where adult characters get their jollies by buddying up to naive five year olds and encouraging them to experiment with drugs and mistreatment.
Folks in Hollywood are trying to develop a preteen market for raunchy stuff, but I think most American parents would agree that early childhood is a time of mental innocence that should be protected from uncaring media market exploitation. To many American mothers there's probably nothing more pathetic and unsettling than the sight of a theater full of unsupervised little eight year olds laughing raucously as movie character father Adam Sandler jokes about a woman's "ice cold tits."
Reviewed by David Sunga
June 25, 1999
Copyright © 1999 by David Sunga
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