1995 Movies

Was I Nuts? – Empire Records

Posted on by Brian Zitzelman

For people of a certain age, specifically those on the border of Generation X and Millennial, this next sentence will make you feel old. Empire Records is about to turn 20. If you weren’t in middle school or high school in the mid-90s, Empire Records likely means nothing to you. It came and went in theatres, won zero film-related awards and no long appears on cable every weekend. The only lasting impact it appears to have on internet culture is the rather small, if annual, celebration of “Rex Manning Day,” which ties into the movie’s central plot.

Yet, for people like me, it was a pop-culture milestone. Friends were made over the sole fact that the other person loved Empire Records too. It’s the first film I can remember flatly stating as my favorite film all of time. I gorged on various Monty Python movies, Evil Dead pictures and a handful of other releases. Empire Records was mine. Or ours. It was a combination of Richard Linklater’s chattiness and simplicity with Cameron Crowe’s sweetness and romance. I think many of us believed the thing would stand as the 90s edition of The Breakfast Club, with various personalities finding out how similar they are and uniting for a common cause.

That didn’t occur. Empire Records has faded. Unlike John Hughes’ filmography, the movie is talked about with as much frequency and import as Pogs or other 90s staples that faded as quickly as they came. Why did this happen? Should it have happened? Is Empire Records a forgotten classic, a rightly ignored stab at appealing to America’s youth or something in between?

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The Film

Released on September 22, 1995 and out of theatres by the end of October, Empire Records earned a tad over $300,000 at the box-office. The movie was directed by Allan Moyle, who had previously done a film also tied to the world of music; Pump Up the Volume. Where that picture dealt with a character played by Christian Slater who ran a pirate radio station, Empire Records took us into a more corporate world, of a sort. It’s characters were employees of the titular record store, an independent shop that is on the verge of coming under the wing of a national chain.

Other than store manager Joe (Anthony LaPaglia), the cast consists largely of teens, or adults pretending to be as such. There is the rambunctious, livewire Mark (Ethan Embry), the counter-culture, melancholy Deb (Robin Tunney), the catty, confident Gina (Renee Zellweger), the arty, lovesick A.J. (Johnny Whitworth), the object of his desire Corey (Liv Tyler) and the one that kicks all of the trouble into gear Lucas (Rory Cochrane). Said trouble erupts after Lucas tries to save the store from corporate takeover by – unsuccessfully – bidding the day’s earnings at a nearby casino.

Over the course of twenty-four hours, jobs are given and lost, love is professed and rejected, alternative rock blares from the speakers and a troubadour singer named Rex Manning (Maxwell Caulfield) ends up surrounded by much of this wackiness.

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The Memory

For a period of four or five years, as mentioned above, Empire Records was my favorite film. I had a recorded version off of some premium movie channel, then a legit VHS copy, not to mention the soundtrack playing on something close to a loop. Dozens of Saturday night were spent spinning through it with my dear friend Jax; akin to a Rocky Horror Picture Show reenactment for two. If the previously discussed Kevin Smith movies were a key facet of how I joked with friends, Empire Records was the chunk that represented my emotional mindset. As many my age did, I found something to connect with in nearly all of the characters that inhabited.

A.J.’s longing for Corey mimicked so many high school crushes. Mark’s obsession with thunderous guitars echoed my passion for numerous metal bands of the time. Debra’s depression rang close, as I’m sure it did for countless other teens. Despite the fact that not a single moment in Empire Records takes places in a classroom, it felt particularly potent in terms of its teenage sensibilities. These were the people I wanted to spend time with. I wanted to veto someone else’s bad musical choices. I longed to be as witty as Lucas. I dreamed of rocking out on the roof at night.

Each viewing brought fresh details, be they a new recognition of a band’s poster in the background or a song in the faint background of a scene. On what must’ve been my twentieth or so evening with Empire Records, I noticed that Dishwalla’s “Counting Blue Cars” could be heard when Berko (Coyote Shivers) makes his first appearance. My mind was blown. How had I not heard this? Why wasn’t that song on the soundtrack? How did the filmmakers pick that song months before it became a hit?

The fact that much of this was declared by critics as a re-appropriating of serious, genuine alternative culture in order to sell it to white, suburban teens didn’t mean a thing to me. Adult me can recognize that the songs of The Cranberries and Gin Blossoms aren’t necessarily milestones in terms of songwriting. Teenage me literally asked for an album from The Meices, a group whose highpoint was being the background track to a chase scene in a financially unsuccessful film.

Or was it unsuccessful. Yes it lacked the box-office skills, but nearly everyone I knew at Leonardtown High School in southern chunk of Maryland owned Empire Records and its soundtrack. It’s rental and VHS sales numbers have to be significant, though I have been unable to dig up any of these numbers. Still, the movie had appeal through-out that certain niche of American culture. The movie may not be a touchstone many people revisit. It is nevertheless one that had several years of devotion unlike nearly any other movie for my demo in the mid-90s.

The Expectations

I know Empire Records isn’t going to suddenly re-enter the pantheon of personal favorites. That fact I can tell before sitting down for a single frame for the first time since probably 2000. That doesn’t equate crap. Director Allan Moyle’s career may not be littered with classics, just as the movie’s screenwriter Carol Heikkinen isn’t. Still, a lot of quality cinema emerged from people who only managed to tap into something once.

I expect to roll my eyes. I expect to laugh a lot too and to find the majority of the ensemble to have a sweet, simple chemistry. We shall see.

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The Verdict

Can something be crassly earnest? Empire Records sure implies this. Though it’s a touchstone for a particular segment of 90s kids, the film actually brings to mind the thought of Emo kids a decade later. There is a raw, flailing sensitivity going on here, which of course would translate well to the raw, flailing nature of being a teenager. Sure the movie has someone shout, “Damn the man! Save the Empire!” in its closing act. Empire Records isn’t really engaging with the counter-culture movement as much as its twenty-somethings going through that faze where the world’s options can be overwhelming. It may not do it with particular nuance or perfect vision, but there is a beating heart in Moyle’s movie that translates.

Aiding matters first and foremost is the cast, especially the trio of Cochrane, Tunney and Anthony LaPaglia. Before becoming staples of television crime-dramas, these three put in rather stellar work here. Cochrane hits the right level of overconfident and good-natured as Lucas, the one who fucks it up and ends up accidentally igniting changes in those around him. His discussions with the camera, where he runs through plans and frets about his mistakes, could read as obnoxious. Cochrane makes it fun, as if we were along for the mischief. Tunney’s Deb is a buzz-saw of feelings; bipolar and pissed at the world for letting her down. It cruises along as the perfect shade of melancholy, without ever overstepping into outright weepiness. LaPaglia has the harder job as Joe, the manager of the store. He is essentially the dad of these misfit toys. His kind, concerned presence bares a tired saltiness that allows Joe some depth.

The rest of the cast is mostly solid. Zellweger is engagingly cruel and broken, showing the fire and occasional goofiness that made her best parts memorably years later. Caulfield is a wonderful prick. He oozes the condescension that pits him alongside Christopher McDonald’s Shooter McGavin as one of the great, love-to-loathe assholes of the 90s. Embry is all energy and excitement as Mark; somehow not annoying in-spite of a part that asks him to basically squeak with joy.

Where things don’t entirely work are in the A.J. and and Corey relationship. Whitworth plays it with the appropriate earnestness, but the pairing with Tyler is close to a non-starter. Some of that is the nature of the script. We see A.J. talk about loving Corey deeply and narrowing down the exact time of day he’s going to tell her his true feelings. What isn’t shown is why. Tyler basically smiles or cries a bunch as Corey; less a person than a cradle of traits. She bakes for everyone. She studies too hard. She is equally messed up. Tyler and Whitworth play what’s on the page as best they can. What’s there is a hole that occasionally swallows up the good parts around it.

The joy in the return comes from comedic bits that hold up well. Lucas pestering a shoplifter by being obtuse and bizarre. Mark getting high and imagining getting eaten alive by heavy-metal act Gwar. A.J. practicing his confessional lines for Corey and conjuring, “You know that feeling when you get out of a warm bath… well… you make me feel like a bath?”

The joy in the return comes from really loving all things Lucas and Deb. That quietly moving scene between LaPaglia and Tunney where she confesses her attempt at suicide via a pink Lady Bic. A soundtrack that may not be littered with great acts, but great songs.

The joy in the return comes from seeing that Empire Records, for its faults and all, is actually a pretty solid film.

Was I Nuts ? – Tommy Boy

Posted on by Brian Zitzelman

A fresh reminder that I’m old as hell, Tommy Boy turns 20 on Tuesday. To commemorate the movie that launched Chris Farley’s cinematic career, I threw on this middle-school favorite to figure out if the movie still finds that sweet-spot of broad comedy. I know I still love watching old Farley clips, but have no clue if his most cherished film is worth throwing back into the rotation.

The Film

Released on March 31st, 1995, Tommy Boy made a moderate financial impact, with Tommy Boy earning a perfectly fine and forgettable $32 million. It would turn into a cable staple in the mid-90s though, getting far more play than many of that year’s biggest hits, unless you live in some weird alternate world where Congo still runs on USA every Saturday.

The narrative follows Farley as Tommy Callahan, a kind and lovable idiot. Fresh off just barely graduating college, Tommy heads back to Sandusky, Ohio to work for his father’s auto-parts business. A man of few skills, Tommy finds himself on the road in desperate need to make a number of big sales of the company’s brake-pads. He is joined by Richard (David Spade), a sarcastic former classmate of Tommy’s whom knows every detail of the product, if little in the way of casual conversation. Along the way Tommy falls down, cars smash into things and Farley yells in the way Farley does.

The Memory

Tommy Boy must have had some deal with HBO that required it to be played twice a day for all of 1996. I never owned the movie, though I am absolutely positive that I watched it around fifty times that year. Yes, I didn’t have much of a life for the back half of that year (yay Freshman year in a new state), but I gulped this thing down each time. Farley was gold to my mind, like the aforementioned Sandler, due in no small part to Comedy Central showing their runs on “Saturday Night Live” frequently.

I know Farley’s comedic styling wasn’t particularly highbrow. At the time, that wasn’t especially a concern. I wasn’t looking for clever commentaries on popular culture, inventive obscenities or really anything remotely clever. A fat guy getting hurt or ripping a coat in two due to his girth was sufficient enough. Oh the innocence. Let it resonate.

The Expectation

On the one hand, I have viewed a few of Farley’s other projects in recent years and found his physical comedy to be top-notch. On the other hand, I do fear director Peter Segal. I have disliked the vast majority of the man’s efforts since Tommy Boy, like Anger Management, The Longest Yard and, oh Jebus, Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. Maybe those are bad films independent of Tommy Boy’s quality. Maybe those films I find terrible because I wasn’t thirteen when they came out and thus required a smidge of talent to find myself laughing at something.

I’m going to be hopeful. It’s true I pretty much loathe David Spade in, well, everything that doesn’t feature Farley. This has Farley and I have confidence his shtick has retained the warmth at its center that transcended it from merely being big guy fall down aka Kevin James.

The Verdict

I liked Farley’s Tommy. I disliked Tommy Boy. It turns out Peter Segal has always made bad movies, I just didn’t always have the knowledge base to realize that fact.

Perhaps bad is too strong; uninteresting perhaps. Tommy Boy is an uninteresting film. It’s the kind of movie that spends too much of its time setting up a thin and bland plot, a big no-no for comedies. The characters played by Bo Derek and Rob Lowe, who are trying to con the ol’ brake-pad business out of millions, are guarantees for non-laughter. They exist for the movie to have narrative momentum and nothing else, outside of the one scene where Lowe hangs out for an evening with his newfound brother-in-law Tommy.

The rest is a series of alright scenes, all pitched at the same comedic register. Jokes are either about Farley being loud, overweight or stupid. Funny things can be done with this, but the script by Bonnie and Terry Turner rarely do much with it. There are two quality jokes they ring from their doofus protagonist. The first is a running gag about Tommy’s inability to regurgitate his father’s sales line, “I can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull’s ass, but I’d rather take a butcher’s word for it.” The second is the film’s one good one-liner, in which Tommy defends his lengthy university experience. Tommy proclaims, “You know a lot of people go to college for seven years. “ Richard nicely retorts, “I know, they’re called doctors.”

Where that year’s Billy Madison had an edge and insanity to its styling, Segal’s picture is content to laugh at a man being hit in the nuts. Of its many, oh so many, set-pieces surrounding someone howling or being injured, the only one that hits is when Tommy is getting pulled over by the police and conjures the idea to pretend there are countless bees attacking him in order to hide the fact that there are open beer-cans in the car. Along with Richard, he hops out of the automobile and freaks that there are, “Bees! Bees everywhere!” Adding that, “Your firearms are useless against them.” The two officers, each terrified, amusingly run for the hills instead of helping.

The rest of Tommy Boy just bumbles along. This isn’t the kind of comedy you hate watching. Instead, it’s one I can see why others would enjoy. If people screaming about hijinks on the road, from hoods coming loose to deer being crashed into; then fine, Tommy Boy is for you. It isn’t for me anymore. Over ninety-seven minutes, there are easy gags that almost never build from moment to moment. There is no escalation to the humor for the majority of the running time. Add to that the level of safety to the material and it’s boring more often than not.

Farley is at least an enjoyable presence. There is a sincerity to his performances that keep the over-the-top nature of his work from being grating, or worse, cloying when the story leans into dramatics. You feel for Tommy because of Farley. You may not enjoy the wackiness he brings up himself and encounters, but because of Farley’s sweetness, that is less a bother than it would be in many other hands.

Was I Nuts ? – Mallrats

Posted on by Brian Zitzelman

Last summer, I kicked off the ‘Was I Nuts?’ series with Kevin Smith’s debut film Clerks. I was curious to know if a staple from my teenage years still held any muster. In the end I found it still good, but not quite the all-time great comedy I had remembered it being.

Clerks wasn’t the only gem in the Smith gauntlet however. It’s biggest fanboys, of which I most certainly was, memorized his next four films with significant, if slightly lesser, enthusiasm. So, to kick off the 2015 run of ‘Was I Nuts?’; it’s all Kevin Smith, all the time in order to see how the rest of that “classic” run of his filmography holds. I begin things with his supposed to be breakout movie Mallrats.

The Film

Arriving in theatres in late 1995, Mallrats was thought to be the film to take Smith from buzz-y indie icon to a bankable comedy director. This didn’t work out. Many of the critics that championed his first feature decried Mallrats as infantile and a complete misfire. Smith himself apologized for the film months after its release.

Nonetheless, as the cult of Smith grew, Mallrats was accepted.

The film follows a pair of aimless dolts. The first is the sensitive and easily bothered T.S. (Jeremy London), who ends up dumped by his girlfriend Brandi (Claire Forlani) in the opening of the film. This situation is immediately followed by Rene (Shannon Doherty) leaving Brodie (Jason Lee) after another round of his videogame obsession and mother-fearing. As the topless psychic eventually states, the two are both on the outs with their prospective studies. They opt for a day at the local mall, where each ends up confronting their exes amidst a live game-show, take part in a pre-Marvel Stan Lee cameo and meet up with Smith staples Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith himself). Plus, Ben Affleck continues his string of playing complete assholes in 90s ensemble movies (see Dazed and Confused, School Ties).

 

The Memory

Mallrats was a total staple of my California, Maryland teen years. I had recorded it off Starz onto a VHS tape with who knows what else on it, but it was Smith’s story of comic-book nerds, stink-palms and Silent Bob that was prone to regular rewinds. Though my closest friends and I regularly quoted it, I definitely recall it consuming my hours less than Clerks or later Chasing Amy. Why this was the case I can’t recall. We regurgitated various monologues, attempted to use Brodie’s cup trick to get free soda at the food court and yelled about how it’s a “God damned sailboat!” Yet, there has to be a reason it never hit my bones as deeply.

There is additionally a strange memory of sitting down one Saturday night with my dear friend Charlie and viewed the cable version, which had so much of Jay’s dialogue re-dubbed he could hardly be called the actor playing the part.

 

The Expectations

I’m worried about this one. The ageing of comedies is a special thing and I think my gut instincts to not care for Mallrats the way I did for Clerks might be wiser than I realized. Smith’s fanbase remains large, even if many of those that once gorged his every offering has changed. Telling a friend I was going to be going on this all-Smith roadtrip down memory lane was met with, “Why would you do that to yourself.”

Who knows, maybe Smith was right to apologize for this film. Maybe he was right years later to welcome it back into the fold. I  just fear I’m in store for 94 minutes of masturbation jokes.

 

The Verdict

Mallrats is not unlike Clerks in many ways. The structure of it all is rather identical, with the two best friends – one the straight man, the other the goofball – hanging around a self-enclosed area. They ponder their love-lives, popular culture and the weirdos that walk by them.

The big difference is Clerks is funny.

Mallrats features the same rapid nature of its jokes, layering in punchlines, callbacks and stingers to each of its scenes. The success rate is poor and then some. The film has a sheen to it that, despite its comfortable vulgarity, nevertheless feels utterly safe. Yes, you won’t find many movies that discuss whether or not The Thing has a rocky, orange shaft, but that is missing the point. Smith’s movie claws for laughs to a cloying degree, PG-13-ing its predecessors edges.

Take the Smith staples Jay and Silent Bob. In Clerks they were almost dangerous; heckling passersby, selling drugs and generally just wanting to fuck with the world. Here, they play cute with kittens, use a sock full of quarters to attack someone and quote Return of the Jedi. They no longer stick out, becoming merely part of the nerdy core of this cast of characters. As I recall, Chasing Amy attempted to rectify this with Silent Bob going on a lengthy monologue about his own personal qualms, while Jay ridiculed saying things like the Mallrats line “Snoochie boochies.”

Worse is T.S., a less engaging Dante 2.0. Nobody would ever claim Brian O’Halloran kills it as Dante in Clerks. There is something to him and the character though. He’s a sad-sack who is rightly ridiculed for looking at the worst case scenario in every situation, even as he skirts the blame at each turn. It was unclear exactly why he was so close to his co-worker/best-friend Randall (Jeff Anderson) at times, even if in the end there was an established history and mutual interests. In Mallrats, London’s T.S. takes the moping element of Dante, along with being the less eccentric one of a twosome and loses all of the shading. London stares doe-eyed as he comes to personal realizations about his romantic relationships, has zero worthwhile lines and comes off as an uninteresting prude. Not aiding London is Smith’s script, giving T.S. question after question. I didn’t keep track, though if I had I’m positive half of his lines are questions about how someone feels, what’s happening or clarifications for odd statements.

London’s romantic interest is no better. I was always curious in high school why Claire Forlani didn’t become a bigger star; it would appear it was tied to her acting ability. The amount of time given to this dull duo’s longings is a big gap in the center of Mallrats. The concluding game-show features T.S. sneaking his way onto the set where Claire is picking a suitor to go out with. They banter back and forth about the seriousness of the relationship, life goals and the like; all tedious. The chemistry is non-existent.

At least Jason Lee’s Brodie has some strangely compelling connection with Shannon Doherty’s Rene. They bicker and bite with passion, each angry at the world about whatever and seemingly content to be bitter together.

In fact, if there’s anything to hold onto from my Mallrats memories its Lee. Though Brodie’s quips aren’t as consistent as I recalled, a good handful have stood the test of time. Watching Lee’s anger slowly boil forth as he sees a kid improperly riding an escalator over-and-over is quite hysterical, crescendo-ing with him yelling in disgust, “That’s criminal…that kid…is back on the escalator again!” It makes sense why, of all the cast, Lee was the one able to transform a part in the movie into something more as he’s one of the only people with any charisma throughout the entire feature.

Mallrats comes across like a reheated regurgitation of the Smith shtick, lacking depth to its geekery or the heartfelt cynicism of its predecessor. Two years later he would stretch out his dramatic chops with Chasing Amy, of which I will be diving into soon.

Was I Nuts? – Billy Madison

Posted on by Brian Zitzelman

I’m to blame for all of these Adam Sandler movies. Well, maybe not me specifically, but people of my ilk; white guys in their 30s. See, beginning with 1995’s Billy Madison, Sandler began truly growing his empire of poop jokes, funny voices and schmaltzy endings. It was catnip for teenage boys and that’s exactly what I was at the time.

Still, Billy Madison, along with his next movie Happy Gilmore, lingers in many minds as a significant step above his later movies like Mr. Deeds or You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. The argument is that those films have a certain crass mainstream nature that aims for lowest common denominator, where Sandler’s initial outings had an inspired lunacy that lifted the vulgarity to a greater level.

Well, nearly 20 years later, I’m going to take a step back into the movie that ramped up Sandler from another “Saturday Night Live” alum trying to have a film career into an institution that, though wavering, still exists today. I’m going to ask…was I nuts?

The Film

Billy Madison tells the story of the titular man-child, years before that became a trendy term. Sandler plays Billy, the doofish son of a hotel tycoon. Billy’s average day includes getting drunk with his buddies, lighting feces on fire and getting amped for the arrival of porno mags. One day his father decides to retire and, quite understandably, pops and his fellow businessmen don’t trust Billy to take the reigns. Leading the charge against Billy is Eric (Bradley Whitford), a snooty suck-up longing to be CEO himself.

After it’s revealed that Billy didn’t even complete his education without bribes from his father, a strange agreement is made. If Billy can make it through elementary, middle and high school over the course of a few months, he can then be eligible for his dad’s job. What follows is a series of high jinks, bullying and a half-dead clown.

The Memory

I admit I didn’t get onto the Sandler bandwagon at its dawn, getting introduced to Billy Madison via endless cable repeats at various friends’ homes. Eventually, I would memorize the majority of this picture, absorbing its peculiar rhythms into my bones. For the majority of my teen years, if this movie was on television and I came across it, I sat down for its entirety. Quoting the bitterly angry Chris Farley bus-driver or shouting “O’Doyle rules!” was a part of my lexicon second only to the likes of Monty Python, Kevin Smith or “The Simpsons.”

Expectations

Frankly, I have next to no clue what kind of quality Billy Madison contains. There’s a strong chance it’s as bad as most Sandler movies have come to be, with a self-satisfaction and obnoxiousness on full display. Just as I was the perfect demo for Garden State, Sandler’s foul-mouthed idiot came about when I was at my most foul-mouthed and idiot-ish. Hell, I had a Yasmine Bleeth poster on my walls. If I was going to love a movie at the time, the dumber and more prat-fall heavy the better.

I expect a handful of comedic nuggets and little else; hopefully not though.

The Verdict

It might be unfair or even incorrect to say this, but Adam Sandler is easily the worst thing about Billy Madison. His character is meant to be annoying, at least in the opening volley, and sure as fuck he is indeed that. Within seconds, Sandler is doing his baby-voice singing to himself thing about the importance of suntan lotion. His entire performance borders on grating, except in the scenes where he is the one being made uncomfortable, be it by his elementary school peers or his lust-driven housekeeper.

Yet, while Sandler’s acting is on the irksome side, he has to be given credit for co-writing the film; for that ridiculousness which largely disappeared from his more successful movies is ever-present and really funny. I remembered things like the penguin that would taunt Billy when he was smashed and the richness of Farley’s slightly demented bus-driver, who rants to himself about having to eat a banana for a snack. Nearly all of the one-liners by Billy’s best friends (Norm MacDonald and Mark Beltzman) had exited my mind, same for the aforementioned housekeeper and Steve Buscemi’s role as a psychotic old classmate of our lead. Each of these are played with the right amount of weirdness by director Tamra Davis, who also made the cult classic Half Baked and the cult-classic-in-a-bad-way Crossroads featuring Britney Spears.

The best friends, for example, aren’t portrayed as cruel; just joyous idiots who don’t know better. They kind of live in their own bubble alongside Billy, never interrupting the plot. Each one pops in for a one-liner here or there, like when MacDonald’s Frank is enjoying the lavish party being thrown for Billy first grade graduation. He stands there dumbfounded by the gathering and bluntly spurts out, “When I get graduated first grade, all my dad did was tell me to get a job.”

As for the housekeeper, played to the tilt by Theresa Merritt, she too gravitates the main plot and spits out her own thoughts. There’s a wonderfully odd beat where she yells at Billy to go fix himself up. Merritt stands there and states, “That boy’s a fine piece of work all right,” before shaking her head, laughing and declaring, “He’s a fine piece of ass though too.”

There are generic things in Billy Madison, primarily the romantic subplot with the bland Bridgette Wilson. It keeps sneaking in these strange elements to spice it up through out though. Two high school boys accidentally witness a grown man’s testiscles, both bewildered by how strange they are. There’s the principal obsessed with his cheating ex-wife, who opts to bring up his hatred for her at any chance afforded, as well as delivering the killer reply to Billy’s nonsensical response about the Industrial Revolution. Truly, it’s a piece of writing by Sandler and Tim Herlihy that just kills. Billy, all proud of himself for bluffing an answer that is tied to a book that was read to him in his first grade class, is swiftly and thoroughly put down by the principal who is judging the final act’s big educational decathlon. The principal proclaims, “Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At not point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Plus, Bradley Whitford’s Eric is a terrifically entertaining douche, snidely laughing after what he deems are clever comebacks, whom is only to be topped by Christopher McDonald’s Shooter McGavin in Sandler’s Happy Gilmore. That is for another time though.

Sandler may have lost his comedic edge at some juncture; he once used it to excellent effect.