Maggie Gallagher hints at a serious issue in her review of the new Adam Sandler movie, Spanglish, the emergence of the "doofus dad" phenomenon. Why is it that in popular culture today we can never take fathers seriously? If they are worthy of being listened to at all, it is always with a healthy dose of disrespect. They are loveable, but wierd. If they are not worthy of riducule then they are also not worthy of love. No strong dads, please. Gallagher argues that Spanglish may be an antidote to that phenomenon. If so, I think it will be worth seeing.
Well the thing holding me back is I’ll poke my eyes out with a hot poker before I’ll go see any movie with Adam Sandler in a starring role. I even forsook ever watching PT Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love, and I love Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Hard Eight (Sydney) but I refused to suffer through Sandler’s annoying hystrionics. He wasn’t funny on SNL, he wasn’t funny in Waterboy (he started an entirely new genre of moron films) and he can’t act his way out of a paper bag. Adam Sandler is lame in any form. Strong dad or no.
Hollywood and the advertising industry have, for years now, had what seems to be a policy of portraying men as either bad guys, losers, idiots, or at least the butts of the joke. The main exceptions are when they’re needed to enforce some kind of politically correct point against another male.
Yet another arena in which we need to take our culture back from people who are determined to subvert it.
The movie got some bad reviews from ordinary people (not James L. Brooks worshipping professional reviewers). The buzz was, "well the cliche Hollywood ending might not have been merited, but at least give us SOMETHING."
What disturbed people was that the Dad ended up as a doofus wimp, with the self-obsessed, neurotic, and cogenitally unfaithful wife. After seeing Tea Leoni’s character humiliate her non-slim daughter and betray her husband, the audience bought that she didn’t belong with the Dad and kids. Yet that’s where she ended up, suggesting that Brooks wasn’t willing to take things all the way and suggest that no one (kids, parents, wives, and husbands) can "have it all."
It’s just another portrait of a doofus Dad, Sandler’s character has to put up with his cheating wife cause he’s wimpy saint in the words of one wag.
Someone should tell Sandler to shape up - I’m pretty sure he’s a Republican who spoke in favor of Bush (believe it or not!!)...