[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.ifilm.com/efp" width="448" height="365" fvars="flvbaseclip=2807485" wmode="transparent" /] Lets go out on a limb and say this looks good. It’s about Adam Sandler having a sort of middle aged adolescent nerous breakdown after losing his family on 9/11, the relationship he forms with former college friend Don Cheadle and the effect they have on each other’s lives. Which include annoying Jada Pinkett Smith.
It’s written and directed by Mike Binder. Who? Well I never saw his The Upside Of Anger but if he can score 63 on Metacritic with a film starring Kevin Costner he must be doing something right. Binder also directed several episodes of the short lived but excellently moody drama American Gothic. Holla back if you remember that one.
Anyone who saw Punch Drunk Love will agree that Sandler’s great in these “broken man” roles, even though the bit where he puts his headphones back on feels borrowed. And Don Cheadles’s just a fine actor (dreadful Cockney accent in Ocean’s Eleven excepted). So let’s be cautiously optimistic for some quality sadness to triumph type drama, with two fine performances from the leads and lots of complaining from JPS.
Reign Over Me opens March 23rd.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Michael Llaneza said
March 18 2007 @ 9:23 am
Wow, Sandler’s got two mentions on the front page here. Must be a coincidence.
Let me tell you what I wish he’d been in: War of the Worlds. No, Sandler can’t open that movie – it needed someone of Cruise’s stature – but he’d have been good in it. The well-intentioned failure of a dad is a role he’s good at, and WotW didn’t call for much more than that. He couldn’t have been worse than Cruise (it was an awkward scene for any actor) in the “unpleasant sequence of events in the basement with the shovel” sequence, and he’d have been better in the rest of the movie – especially in the opening before things start blowing up real big.
Try it, if you ever put WotW in your DVD player, just imagine Sandler in place of Cruise. It’s an easy mental trick.
If you haven’t seen the movie, see it just for the 30-second “ghost train” sequence.