Sandy Wexler

You know how you’re sometimes tempted to pick a scab? You know you shouldn’t – it will hurt, it will bleed, it will leave a scar. And yet, perversely, you do it anyway? That essentially sums up my relationship with watching Adam Sandler movies. I know I’m going to hate it and that nothing good will come of it. And yet, perversely, every so often, I’m tempted to pick the scab that is his latest offering.

Sandler has made a career of playing lazy, misanthropic losers who somehow fall backwards into success, often not in spite of their reprobate nature but rather because of it. His movies aren’t stories so much as they are wish fulfillment fantasies for failure-to-launch man-children who are still living in their parents’ basement, still hoping for the day that they get that gig as a professional online game player or taste tester for all the new flavors of Doritos. If movie stars really do serve as role models for some people, it’s a safe bet that Adam Sandler is a threat to the very fabric of world culture. 

 Sandler’s latest is Sandy Wexler which was just released on Netflix. The title character is a deluded, annoying, compulsive liar who serves as a personal manager in Hollywood to a ridiculous stable of has beens and never-weres. Wexler gives them bad advice, ruins opportunities for them, and generally irritates everyone who comes within a ten foot radius of him. The story begins when he discovers Courtney Clark, a young singer with genuine talent. Played by Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson, Courtney is sweet, naïve, and tremendously gifted. Sandy manages to connect her with actual power players and her career takes off. As he is busy damaging his career as he’s trying to build it, Sandy falls in love with Courtney – despite the fact that she is young, talented, smart, and beautiful whereas he seems to have stumbled out of a fifty year old cartoon about the world’s most annoying old man.

Eventually, Sandy quits as Courtney’s manager because he realizes he’s out of his depth and his life and career spiral down from there. However, because this is an Adam Sandler movie and not anything that resembles real life, one conversation with a former client of his magically changes Sandy and he becomes this whole other person who is suddenly capable of triumph. Everything ends happily except for the fact that the film ends with Sandler singing in a funny voice. Of course.

The creative team on the film is the same that Sandler has worked with his whole career, the same bunch of conspirators and hangers on who encourage his worst tendencies. Both in front of and behind the camera, Sandler surrounds himself with loyal but apparently blind collaborators.

Interestingly, it’s one of those collaborators that’s most responsible for Sandy Wexler and that’s Sandler’s real life personal manager, Sandy Wernick. Wernick signed Sandler at age 22 and has been with him ever since. Apparently, everything from Wexler’s voice to his tendency to always have food stuck in his teeth is based on Wernick – which makes one wonder – what’s it like to be Adam Sandler’s friend? Yes, he’ll probably make you rich, but he also may make a two-plus hour film about what an annoying idiot you are.

Sandy Wexler is part of what is now an eight picture deal with Netflix that began with the execrable Ridiculous Six and will probably end with the apocalypse when Adam Sandler’s garbagy, low-brow humor eventually tears a hole in the space time continuum. I have decided the quality control guy at Netflix is a scarecrow in a suit that’s got a sign propped up reading, “Sounds great, Adam.”

Like Ridiculous Six and The Do-Over, a lot of people are going to see Sandy Wexler. It is as unavoidable as it is unfortunate. The only real question is will you see it? Lots of people pick scabs, but I did so you don’t have to, my friends. Spend that 131 minutes elsewhere.