Word: sandler
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...Sandler plays Skeeter Bronson, son of a one-time hotel magnate (Jonathan Pryce) who lost his empire to Barry Nottingham (Richard Griffiths, slimmed down a few stone since his History Boys stint). Now Nottingham is grooming the snidely Kendall (Guy Pearce) as his heir, while employing Skeeter in the lowly capacity of light-bulb changer. At the hotel his ally is do-nothing Mickey (Russell Brand); his other adversary is the officious Aspen (Lucy Lawless of Xena renown); and the potential prize and troublemaker is Nottingham's sexy daughter Violet (Teresa Palmer). When Skeeter's sister (Courteney Cox) goes...
...that paragraph as much a chore to read as it was to write? Any comedy with 11 major actors - not including Sandler's wife Jackie and daughter Sadie, the inevitable turn by Rob Schneider (another Sandler familiar, John Turturro, sat this one out) and a goggle-eyed guinea pig named Bugsy - is either (a) brilliantly dense in the Preston Sturges tradition or (b) just an overcongested mess. Go with...
...haven't got to the main contrivance of the plot, hatched by Matt Lopez and fleshed out by longtime Sandler scribe Tim Herlihy. Obliged to read the children to sleep with a bedtime story, Skeeter tosses aside his sister's PC books like The Organic Squirrel Gets a Bike Helmet ("Communist stuff," he opines) and invents a fairy tale of his own: a medieval frolic where he is Sir Fix-a-Lot and Kendall is Sir Butt-kiss. As Skeeter wanly improvs, the kids add impish twists of their own: that the sky will rain gumballs, a dwarf will ruin...
...entire enterprise. Sure, there's potential in the kids-as-sorcerers plot, and game energy in the pan-Anglo cast. (Palmer, from Australia, is a standout as the Paris Hiltonish vixen, much more charming than the original.) And yet the movie doesn't move, because it is defined by Sandler's essentially static, grudging persona...
...back to the old, tightly-wound Adam. In one of his exchanges with creepy Kendall, Skeeter says, "And me, I'm like the stink on your feet. I ain't ever goin' anywhere." That line could be a threat, or a confession of his loser status; but coming from Sandler it sounds like a boast. As long as the paying customers cheer his characters' sullen, oafish status quo, he ain't ever goin' anywhere...