That's My Boy
- Year:2012
- Rating:MA
- Director:Sean Anders, John Morris
- Cast:James Caan, Vanilla Ice, Leighton Meester, Andy Samberg, Adam Sandler, Ian Ziering
- Release Date:June 14, 2012
- Distributor:Sony
- Running time:116 minutes
- Film Worth:$17.00
- FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Proving to be one of Adam Sandler’s funniest films in years, this reckless, raunchy and downright dirty comedy comes up trumps.
Sex with twelve-year-olds, sex with octogenarians, sex with siblings, sex with inanimate objects, sex with Vanilla Ice...if you have a problem with inappropriate sexual activity, then That's My Boy is not for you. If that doesn't bother you, it also stars Adam Sandler. In short, That's My Boy will not be featuring on many film critics' end-of-year Top Ten lists...but so what? Who cares what they think anyway, right? Adam Sandler is the critical fraternity's current favourite whipping boy, and unless he's starring in a film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (whereupon he suddenly becomes a comic talent akin to Chaplin, even though he's just doing what he usually does), they instantly drop the hammer. While Sandler's output can admittedly be a little uneven, he is a stand-alone comic powerhouse, and That's My Boy - which signals a move for the actor into the kind of raunchy territory recently trodden by the likes of The Hangover and Bridesmaids - is one of his funniest films in years. Raucous, deliriously risque, winningly salacious, and populated by amusingly bizarre characters, That's My Boy is a dirty comic firecracker.
The film begins in the mid-eighties, and swings in on twelve-year-old Donny Berger (Justin Weaver), the coolest kid in school. So cool, in fact, that he's been noticed by hot-to-trot teacher, Miss McGarricle (Eva Amurri Martino), resulting in a steamy, rippingly inappropriate romance. When they're caught in the act, Donny becomes an international tabloid celebrity, and the - ahem - pregnant Miss McGarricle winds up in prison for a long, long spell. Cut to thirty years later, and Donny (now Adam Sandler) is a washed up media joke, occupying the same kind of pop cultural punchline status as Corey Feldman and Gary Coleman. In debt to the taxman for $40,000, and facing prison himself, Donny's only option appears to be reuniting with his estranged son for a sleazy TV show. The only problem is that Donny's son, Todd (Andy Samberg), is a wealthy, uptight, financial high flyer about to get married to the stuck up Jamie (Leighton Meester), and he doesn't want to have anything to do with his wild, drunken, sexed up, hard partying not-so-old-man. Cue legitimately gut-busting laughs, and probable across-the-board critical eye rolling.
Directed with total abandon by Sean Anders (Sex Drive) and written with a nose-thumbing attitude towards good taste and decency by David Caspe (creator of TV's Happy Endings), That's My Boy starts with a bang - the whole teacher-student sexual relationship tests the boundaries in the best possible way - and doesn't let up for the duration of its running time. As slob-with-a-heart, Donny, Adam Sandler is obviously having a ball, and his seedy brand of mischievously well-meaning good-will literally fizzes off the screen. Engaging Saturday Night Live alumnus, Andy Samberg, is surprisingly but appropriately controlled as the stiff Todd (actually named Han Solo by his twelve-year-old father in one of the film's very funny running jokes), while everyone else (including James Caan as a tough guy priest, and a guess-who big name actress in a hilarious late-game cameo) is utterly in on all the naughty jokes. A middle-finger salute to prudes everywhere (as opposed to the recent face-punch executed by apparent critical darling, Sacha Baron Cohen, in The Dictator), That's My Boy is absolutely wrong...but oh so right.
