No Laughing Matter

Adam Sandler has been awarded the Mark Twain Prize for Humor at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

Adam Sandler?  Really?

That's like awarding Vladimir Putin the Nobel Peace Prize.

It's official: Washington, D.C. has no culture.

Jack, Jill and Razzie

When a bowling ball does what Adam Sandler did at the Razzie Awards Sunday night - hitting all ten available prizes - it's called a "strike." But when you make a movie and it breaks a precedent by winning a total of ten awards from the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation - with two Razzies given to you and the director for both the movie in question and another movie as well! - it's called a strike-out. It means your movie - in this case Jack and Jill, in which Sandler played both title roles, fraternal twins - sucks big time. It means it sucks so badly that the second worst movie of 2011 - which apparently was Just Go With It, which, like Jack and Jill, starred Sandler and was directed by Dennis Dugan - can't even come close to meeting its awfulness. It means that Sandler - a fixture on television and in the movies since beginning a four-year stint in the repertory company of "Saturday Night Live" in 1991 - has no right to complain when people start calling his career into question. And it means that Mencken wannabes like myself - who enjoy interrupting themselves in print with clauses bookended by hyphens - will quickly want to take advantage of tearing down Sandler further.

But I think I've already done all the damage to Sandler that I possibly can on my own. So I'll let the record do the rest of the damage. Here, in its entirety, is the full list of the ten awards Sandler won at the Razzies ceremony on April 1:

Worst Picture (Jack and Jill)

Worst Actor (for Sandler’s work in Jack and Jill and Just Go With It)

Worst Actress (as Jill in Jack and Jill)

Worst Supporting Actor (for Al Pacino’s cameo as himself in Jack and Jill)

Worst Supporting Actress (for David Spade as Monica in Jack and Jill)

Worst Screen Ensemble (for the entire cast of Jack and Jill)

Worst Director (Dennis Dugan for Jack and Jill and Just Go With It)

Worst Remake, Rip-off or Sequel (Jack and Jill for ripping off Ed Wood's camp classic Glen or Glenda)

Worst Screen Couple (for three -count'em, three couples in Jack and Jill - Sandler and Katie Holmes, Sandler and Al Pacino or Sandler with himself)

Worst Screenplay (Jack and Jill)

I can't understand why Al Pacino had anything to do with this  Did he need the money for doing a self-portraying cameo in this picture that badly?

The fact that this movie even made it to the theaters speaks volumes about Hollywood. It means that Hollywood cannot and will not stop making movies that appeal to young dumb males, i.e., every American male under 35. It means that the movie studios would rather bankroll a grade-zero piece of cinematic vulgarity than make a greater number of serious dramas about blacks or Hispanics, offering prima facie evidence that racism in Hollywood is alive and well. It also means that Hollywood is putting out "comedies" that increasingly fail to merit the term.

And that's not the worst of it. Despite Jack and Jill, or more likely because of it - to date, it's grossed $142 million worldwide against its $79 million budget, $73 million of that gross coming from the U.S. and Canada alone - Sandler can count on continuing to get work. He's already slated to appear in two more movies, including a sequel to the ironically titled Grown Ups. That says more about the movie-going public than I care to mention.

Adam Sandler has made a lot of terrible movies, but, as Roger Ebert might say, the celluloid that goes into producing them obviously supplies plenty of raw material for the ukulele pick industry.

I Razz The Razzies

I want to express my displeasure with the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation.

Am I angry that they've nominated the legendary Sarah Jessica Parker for worst actress in two separate performances in two separate movies? No, since she has shown obvious poor judgment of late in the roles she plays.

Am I upset that Adam Sandler got a whopping eleven nominations, including worst actor and worst actress, for his non-comedy Jack and Jill, in which he plays both title roles? No, because I consider Sandler to be one of those typical dumb American males who go from adolescence to senility while bypassing adulthood, and so I do not take him seriously . . . at all.

Am I stunned that Madonna didn't get nominated as worst director for her ego voyage W./E.? No, because I don't think that movie was eligible for consideration anyway. Wait until 2013.

No, I'm peeved because the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation chose this year not to announce its nominations the day before the Oscar nominations or give out its awards the day before the Oscar ceremony. Instead, GRAF founder John Wilson and the voting members of his group chose to announce the nominations now and have their "award" ceremony on April 1 this time, because April Fool's Day was deemed a perfect date for it.

"I have always wondered if we stepped slightly away from lockstep with the Oscars, what would happen," Wilson explained. "We just kept hoping the Oscars would do their ceremony on April 2, but they just never did."

Right. As we all know, the Oscars were once held in late March, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences moved the ceremony up to February to take advantage of TV ratings sweeps. As for holding the Razzies five weeks later, it defeats the purpose of getting Hollywood's worst out of our system before we celebrate Hollywood's finest.

No matter, I eagerly look forward to seeing the purveyors of everything wrong with American cinema get their just deserts as soon as March has gone out like a lamb. And Wilson and the GRAF will come roaring in like lions . . . to which Adam Sandler will likely be thrown.