Word: sandler
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Movie critics secretly believe what so many Hollywood films teach: that even the most ordinary schlubbs can rise to excellence. So this reviewer was happy to salute the recent films of two Hollywood types who previously, to put it politely, hadn't made masterpieces. This summer, Adam Sandler dispensed with his standard idiot character and his movies' gay-baiting infantilism to play a borderline adult in the rambunctious, satisfying You Don't Mess With the Zohan. Director Adam Shankman, who had slummed in Disney comedies about exasperated adults and the sassy kids in their care (The Pacifier, Cheaper...
...approved PG rating. Well, as Emily Dickinson wrote, "Hope is the thing with feathers." After sitting through this fractious fairy tale, we feel as plucked as a Christmas goose. The star and his director have surrendered to their old bad habits, in a movie that will nonetheless provide - as Sandler's character does - a balky babysitter for children in search of a new-style fairy tale...
...Sandler's song notwithstanding, few Hanukkah productions have come close to matching the enduring status of A Charlie Brown Christmas - but the holiday is increasingly spreading its Jewish joy to the world. Last month, thinking woman's heartthrob Jon Stewart appeared on Stephen Colbert's Christmas TV special and meekly sang the tune, Can I Interest You in Hanukkah? Whether the answer from most viewers was yes or no, at least Kyle can tell his South Park buddies it's getting a little less lonely to be a Jew on Christmas...
...turning point for Hanukkah's rise in pop culture visibility can be traced back to 1995 and Adam Sandler's hilarious, if now overplayed, "Chanukah Song" (a musical version of a time-honored Jewish pastime - identifying other Jews). "When you feel like the only kid in town without a Christmas tree, here's a list of people who are Jewish [like Paula Abdul, Kirk Douglas and David Lee Roth], just like you and me..." The underwhelming musical quality of the goofy ditty was beside the point. But the media attention the song received - an actor celebrating Hanukkah? - paved...
...2000s answered with a flood of Festival of Lights extravaganzas. Sandler's critically panned animated 2002 film, Eight Crazy Nights, was a cult hit, while a cool kids' film, Chanukah on Planet Matzah Ball, targeted the 6 and under set. The beautiful teenagers of The O.C. came up with an all-inclusive holiday, much like Seinfeld's Festivus, called Chrismukkah. Jewish hipsters gathered to watch rockers like Jane's Addiction's Perry Farrell toast Hanukkah at the now-annual New York City event, A Jewcy Hanukkah. The punk-pop band the LeeVees formed specifically to "spread Hanukkah cheer" and released...