![]() An art film masquerading as a romantic comedy, PTA tapped into a level of pathos most didn’t think Sandler was capable of, as the electric blue-suited Barry Egan becomes a complex study of manic states a character who comes this close to tipping over the edge of sanity until Emily Watson’s equally strange angel rescues him from a pit of despair and loneliness. Just when the comedian’s volatile man-child persona seemed to run out of gas with the truly atrocious Little Nicky (’00), Paul Thomas Anderson subverted our perception of Sandler (at least, up to that point in his career) with Punch Drunk Love (’02). Billy Madison (’95), Happy Gilmore (’96), and The Waterboy (’98) were screeching stoner delights, while The Wedding Singer (’98) proved there was a beating human heart beneath Sandler’s obnoxious Brooklyn-born and bred abrasiveness. His impish SNL characters – like Canteen Boy, who gets molested by Alec Baldwin’s lecherous Scout troupe leader – were highlights during the years when Chris Farley lived in a van down by the river, and Tim Meadows’ Ladies’ Man wanted to have sex with you and film it. Comedy fans of a certain generation (that sweet overlap between X and Millennial) were partially raised on the guy’s bizarre tapes – a cartoonish mix of juvenile violence peppered in amidst tunes about lunch ladies and Chanukah. It’s tough to say exactly when Adam Sandler stopped being a funny person.
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