FiveThirtyEight Getting Rough On Adam Sandler

Have you noticed that since Adam Sandler signed the NetFlix deal that the press has been a little tougher on him? FiveThirtyEight is taking a look at Sandler’s commercial and critical hits and flops. They have set up a graph placing the failures fully on Sandler’s shoulders while others get the credit for Sandler’s success. Fair.

The graph and categories were set up by FiveThirtyEight’s Walt Hickey who set up a similar organization of Will Ferrell’s films. The categories he uses for all of Adam Sandler’s movies are “The Paydays”, “The Pineapples” and “He’s Trying”. The article and the graph use a combination of Rotten Tomatoes reviews along with the box office gross for each film.

The categories are Paydays, Pineapples, and ‘He’s Trying’, Solid Comedies and others. Walt Hickey compares the Paydays Sandler films to breakfast cereal. Slap Sandler’s name and face on it and people will buy. Hickey writes, “As long as the films make $200 million to $300 million on a $50 million to $85 million budget, everyone is happy.”  Pineapples are the movies that did not hit.  And  “He’s Trying” are the better reviewed films that don’t kill at the box office.

There’s also the early films are called “solid comedies” because Sandler was young and hadn’t run his gimmick into the ground yet. The others are all credited for their directors or supporting casts. He writes, ” Sure, you could call “Spanglish” an Adam Sandler movie, but you could just as easily call it a James Brooks movie, or call “Punch-Drunk Love” a Paul Thomas Anderson or Philip Seymour Hoffman film, or call “Reign Over Me” a Don Cheadle-anchored movie, or call “Funny People” a Judd Apatow flick.”

It will be interesting to see where “The Ridiculous Six” lands on the graph.  What’s the section for  a movie where Native American actors are walking off the set calling the script racist?

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