‘That’s My Boy’ (2012) review; 100 Movies in 90 Days

#25 of 100 on my 100 Movies I’ve Never Seen Before Challenge (part II)

What happened to Adam Sandler? Is he getting worse or am I just getting older? I think it might be a combination of both. Either way, I just am not feeling his movies lately. Hell, I didn’t even see “Jack and Jill”. Seriously? Adam Sandler playing some dude AND his ugly sister. Um. No thanks. Sadly, I didn’t like “Grown Ups” either. It just seems like he’s trying to hard to either make a family movie or act like a complete nut job.

In “That’s My Boy”, it seems like he’s trying to win back the fans he’s lost quickly by making crap movies for the past 5-10 years. He might have pulled it off with this outrageous movie but the movie itself still isn’t very good. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know that Sandler is a guy that knocked up his hottie teacher when he was 15 or something. He becomes a God amongst his friends, not to mention the male teachers at the school. The only problem is, she gets sent to jail and he gets stuck with the baby.

Fast forward to thirty years later. His son, born Han Solo Berger (Andy Samberg), has now changed his name to Todd Peterson to try and distance himself from his loser old man. Donny Berger (Sandler) finds himself in some money trouble and has no choice but to seek his boy out for help. Todd just happens to be getting married to a snobby girl played by Leighton Meester. When Donny shows up, he tries to rekindle his father-son relationship with Todd/Han Solo but ends up causing more trouble.

You see where this is going? It’s all an excuse for Sandler to act like a complete jack ass and wear a stupid wig and talk with a really obnoxious Boston accent. It’s really freakin’ hilarious in a gonna-make you laugh and maybe cringe at the same time. This movie is about as hard-R as Sandler has ever gone before but at the same time it comes off as trying to hard…again. He tries vaguely to give it some kind of heart but it doesn’t quite work.

“That’s My Boy” is funny and the Sandler fans will love it. Besides, Vanilla Ice is pretty funny in it. Yeah. Seriously. There are some good jokes but you just have to wonder how long Sandler can do these parts without it being sad. It might be getting there already.