I watched an Adam Sandler movie - and survived!

Posted Tuesday, May 26, 2015 at 4:29 PM Central

by John Couture

I just returned from the beach. I don't bring that up to brag (OK, maybe just a little), but rather as backdrop for an interesting phenomenon that I witnessed last week. My wife and I and her entire family actually sat through an Adam Sandler movie and survived to tell the tale.

From our toddlers to Julie's parents, there was a wide range of ages represented and we are all rather well educated, but for some reason, we couldn't muster the energy to change the channel. And it's not like the room was equipped with one of those old rotary TVs that required you to actually get up off the couch and rotate the dial to change channels, no we simply didn't change it and no one knows why.

I think, after days of pondering, I might have an explanation.

If you're the reading type of person, you might catch on faster, but if you've ever gone on vacation, you know that if you look around at what people are reading, it's not heavy literature. No, nine times out of ten, it's a trashy romance novel or the like. It's the reason that best-selling authors in these genres always have a new book ready for publication at the start of the summer. Summertime is guilty pleasure time and that's what Adam Sandler movies have become.

They are simply the guilty pleasure films where we can check our minds at the door and simply laugh because we are on vacation and nothing else matters. Don't get me wrong, I used to absolutely adore his earlier films and I will still throw in Happy Gilmore from time to time, but you couldn't pay me to sit through Grown Ups or its sequel.

The film in question that we were inexplicably enamored with was Blended and I loved the previous collaborations with Drew Barrymore (The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates), but there wasn't anything new or compelling about Blended. And yet, we all sat riveted and even laughed in a few different spots.

Perhaps my disdain of Adam Sandler and the like is simply just an impaired frame of mind. If I treat them as trashy vacation novels, then perhaps I can just let go of the fact that there's no redeeming qualities to it and just live in the moment. Of course, when I'm not on vacation time seems more valuable for some reason or another and it becomes much more difficult to "waste" time on a film that I know I will not enjoy.

And yet, I want to enjoy Adam Sandler films again. This summer, his film Pixels intrigues me in ways that I haven't been moved by an Adam Sandler film in over a decade. The second trailer dropped while I was on vacation and it really captures a Ghostbusters vibe.

Of course, this shouldn't be surprising as Sony Pictures is responsible for Ghostbusters and the competing reboots that will be heading to cinemas in the next few years.

I have to admit that I also watched Walk of Shame, Neighbors and If I Stay on my vacation and while I found Neighbors to be enjoyable, the other two were painful. I guess even on vacation, there are limits to one's ability to accept trashy entertainment.

Pixels hits theaters on July 24. They also released this special clip this week celebrating Pac-Man's 35th birthday.