Release Date: June 15, 2012
Director: Sean Anders
MPAA Rating: R
Film Pulse Score: 4/10
That’s My Boy, the new Adam Sandler-Andy Samberg vehicle, is a movie designed to solely introduce audiences to what is to come in the next few years: Andy Samberg’s involvement with Happy Madison Productions. The film offers few laughs and plays out like a washed up memory of what Adam Sandler used to mean to comedy.
As so obviously stressed in the trailers and previews, That’s My Boy is about a young teen (Donny Berger) who is the king of all teens, banging his super hot math teacher (a ridiculously attractive Eva Martino), until he gets caught and finds out she’s pregnant. One of the few things this flick did right is capture the awesomeness that a teenage boy would have if he got caught in a fling with his teacher. It’s every horny adolescent’s dream. Well, for guys that is. After years of separation, because of course Donny wasn’t suited to be a father, his son, Hans Solo (Andy Berger) is now successful and about to be engaged to his beautiful wife Jamie (Leighton Meester) and become a partner in his hedge fund firm. When Donny is in need for cash to avoid going to jail, he pursues convincing his son to partake in a reality television episode to get the money to save his ass. Of course everyone learns something along the way. What that is, however, is still unclear.
The one good thing that this movie does is be itself. It never strays away too far from being a silly, over-the-top, blatant bad movie. It accepts that it will never rise to something worth remembering and embraces it’s own stupidity like a child clutching a teddy bear at night to go to sleep.
The jokes, thankfully, don’t all surround farts and anal sex (some do, but not all of them) but none are too witty to remember and of course there is one Charlie Sheen reference. The writer, David Caspe, previously known for…well, nothing, some show called Happy Endings, doesn’t seem to have the drive for something above 3rd graders attention span and the director, Sean Anders seems to be going downhill post Sex Drive. I will give it to them though for one scene in particular. There is a moment that Sandler and Samberg have, after a rough night of partying for his bachelor party, that almost hints at something deeper, something more real, something that shows that these two have chemistry and can act, but the moment is fleeting and almost seems out of place. However, I would have enjoyed seeing these moments more throughout the movie.
Being that this is Sandler’s and Samberg’s first venture together, we can assume that there will more stupid Happy Madison movies coming out featuring the two of them, but I wish someone would tell them to stop and save us from the horror of what they call movies. Because no one will have the balls or gusto to actually tell them though, we can all rest assured that Grown-Ups 2 will be in theaters soon. Thanks Happy Madison.
