You never know which Adam Sandler man-child you're going to get. A look back at his extensive filmography shows a comic-actor who is ostensibly always playing himself, but to varying degrees of restraint, maturity or, in the case of rom-coms, eligibility. Which Sandler do moviegoers enjoy most? Using aggregate scores from the Metacritic website, there is a distinct correlation between the emotional maturity of his character and the level of popular acclaim for a film. Here are a selection of emotional peaks, and plenty of critical valleys, from a wide-ranging career.
Billy Madison (1995)
Man-child (complete with man-child voice) repeats 12 grades of schooling to inherit his father’s hotel empire. His love interest is his sexy third-grade teacher.
Maturity meter: 1 (out of 10)
Metacritic rating: 16 (out of 100)
Happy Gilmore (1996)
A boorish hockey player takes his goon act to the pro golf circuit with a devastating slapshot-cum-tee-shot. He's ultimately a kind-hearted softie who needs the money to save his grandma's house.
Maturity meter: 4
Metacritic rating: 31
The Wedding Singer (1998)
There’s a plot involving a jilted wedding singer who falls in loved with an engaged waitress, but this movie is remembered as the moment Sandler first played lovable as a romantic lead (and never as engaging as opposite Drew Barrymore)
Maturity meter: 7
Metacritic rating: 59
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Director Paul Thomas Anderson coaxes Sandler to his most acclaimed performance to date, in a bizarre story about a lonely, anger-prone man. It’s worth noting this is the rare Sandler movie since 1999 not produced by his own film company.
Maturity meter: 10
Metacritic rating: 78
50 First Dates (2004)
Sandler steps into the rom-com waters for the first time since The Wedding Singer, and again with Barrymore. A silly story about her character having short-term memory loss is fun, but their chemistry is more ho-hum the second time around.
Maturity meter: 6
Metacritic rating: 48
Spanglish (2004)
Sandler tried on the father-figure role in the lukewarm Big Daddy (1999). He perfects the character here as a successful chef who welcomes a Spanish-speaking housekeeper into his family (though no one is buying Sandler as a cook)
Maturity meter: 6
Metacritic rating: 48
Funny People (2009)
What if Adam Sandler made a self-aware movie about Adam Sandler? Another savvy director, this time Judd Apatow, pushes him in the meta-role of a successful, aging comedian who becomes sick with leukemia.
Maturity meter: 8
Metacritic rating: 60
Grown Ups (2010)
From the heights of Funny People, straight to this. Unsurprisingly, Sandler and his posse of comic oldsters act not-so-grown-up in this comedy that ushered in his current era of low-brow fare.
Maturity meter: 3
Metacritic rating: 30
Jack and Jill (2011)
A modern-day low for Sandler: He plays both the twin-brother and twin-sister in this movie. Al Pacino, incredibly, agreed to play himself.
Maturity meter: 2
Metacritic rating: 23
Men, Women & Children (TBA)
It’s been five years since Sandler‘s last attempt at something more high-minded. Will this Jason Reitman-helmed film, about the sexual lives of its characters, be the answer?