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movies
THE BULLETIN • FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 2012
‘That’s My Boy’ is just pathetic V
anilla Ice is back, back baby. And for that crime alone, Adam Sandler should get the chair. Alas, it’s a minor offense in “That’s My Boy,” a no-holdsbarred raunch-fest that combines bits of “Saturday Night Live” skits and “The Hangover” with every ugly Sandler laugher ever made. When your comedy starts with a criminally “inappropriate” sexual relationship between a 13 year-old boy and his bombshell teacher, the scariest thought is “Yeah, they’re going to have to top that.” Which they then proceed to do. Sandler has made worse movies, but never one as grotesque as this. He stars as Donny Berger, who became famous — notorious — in the ’80s for his illegal fling with Miss McGarricle (Eva Amurri Martino). Donny made a lot of money being the kid who lived Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” fantasy — the envy of his (male) peers. Of course, he blew through all that cash. Thirty years later, all he has to show for the glory days are a dated TV movie about the affair, his old Fiero and a whopping tax bill. Donny’s one hope — find his estranged son, whom he named “Han Solo Berger,” and stage a reunion with the kid and the impris-
oned mom on a sleazy TV show hosted by a guy played by sportscaster/Sandler pal Dan Patrick, sporting freakier hair than usual. Han Solo changed his name to Todd Peterson and grew up to be a dull hedge-fund manager. Todd’s a pushover, the sort of nerd who makes unfunny “beep beep” computer noises when he’s showing off his math skills. “Are you sure you’re not a Chinaman?” his insensitive future in-laws want to know. You will not believe how unfunny “Saturday Night Live’s” Andy Samberg can be until you see this guy — a henpecked groom about to marry the shrill Jamie (Leighton Meester). Tony Orlando plays Todd’s crude and lewd boss. James Caan does the worst Irish accent he could manage, playing a two-fisted priest who will marry the couple.
From previous page This seems odd, since they should be equal opportunity bloodsuckers, but there you have it. Still with him is childhood friend Will Johnson (Anthony Mackie), a free black man whose mistreatment helped form Lincoln’s hatred of slavery. Also still at his side is Joshua Speed (Jimmi Simpson), who hired Lincoln in his Springfield general store; Johnson and Speed join Lincoln in Civil War strategy sessions and are his principal advisers, roles overlooked by history. The movie, directed by Timur Bekmambetov and written by Seth Grahame-Smith, based on his novel, handles all these matters
with an admirable seriousness, which may be the only way they could possibly work. The performances are earnest and sincere, and even villains like Adam (Rufus Sewell), the American leader of the Vampire Nation, doesn’t spit or snarl overmuch. The movie regrettably introduces but does not explain Vadoma (Erin Wasson), a statuesque woman who is several decades ahead of time in her taste for leather fetish wear. Are vampires kinky? I didn’t know. Although we do not attend “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” in search of a history lesson, there’s one glitch I cannot overlook. In the first day of fighting at Gettysburg, the Union sustains
R O G ER MOORE
“That’s My Boy” 111 minutes R, for crude sexual content throughout, nudity, pervasive language and some drug use This film was released June 15.
Courtesy Columbia Pictures
Donny Berger (Adam Sandler), Todd Peterson (An d y Samberg), Jamie Martin (Leighton Meester) and Steve Spirou (Tony Orlando) star in the comedy “That’s My Boy.”
There are a staggering number of shock-for-shock’s-sake scenes that go on, ad nauseum — masturbation jokes that don’t land, clumsy, slow showcase moments for the growing number of clowns on Sandler’s payroll (assorted “Saturday Night Live” alumni, Nick Swardson, etc.) all playing caricatures. And through it all, a muchheavier Sandler waddles and chews on a “Pahk the caah in the chow-duh” Massachusetts accent, reviving the “Wasssuuppppp” catch-phrase, aiming low and sometimes hitting his targets. Maybe the best joke is how “good looking” and “sexy” all the
women say he is, how charmed every character seems by his oafishness. The septic tank of a script undercuts its central thesis — that it’s never too late to learn to be a dad, that there’s nothing wrong with being a childish moron, even as a parent — at every turn. Todd can’t ride a bike, can’t play sports and carries spare underwear with him thanks to assorted childhood traumas. Fans of lower-than-low comedy may choke on their popcorn over every staggering vulgarity. But sentient beings will find a laugh, here and there, as well. The first reunion-with-Vanilla Ice moment
— he and Donny were buds back in the day — is awkward, accusatory and hilarious. And the riotous post-bachelor party bacchanal that Donny throws for his son (with Ice in tow) is cut into a music-video montage that amuses. But mostly, “That’s My Boy” is a groaner. Yet it’s more appropriate for Father’s Day than you’d think. It’s your aging dad, stuck in the past, swearing and carrying on like he’s just heard about those other guys stealing Mike Tyson’s tiger, assuring you he can top it. As if anybody really wants to see that.
a defeat so crushing that Lincoln is tempted to surrender. This is because the Confederate troops, all vampires, are invulnerable to lead bullets, cannon fire and steel blades, and have an alarming way of disappearing and rematerializing. Over breakfast, Lincoln confides his despair to his wife, and says conventional weapons are of no more use against them than — why — than this fork! As he stares at it, he realizes it is a silver fork, and vampires can be killed by silver weapons, as he has proved with his ax-twirling. Now try not to focus too much on the timeline. After his realization, Lincoln mobilizes all resources to gather wagon-loads of
silver in Washington, smelts it and manufactures silver bayonets, bullets and cannonballs. Then we see him, Johnson and Speed on board a weapons train en route to Gettysburg. It is night again, so apparently all of this took less than a day. Never mind. What comes now is a genuinely thrilling action sequence in which the vampires battle with Lincoln and his friends on top of the speeding train, which hurtles toward a high wooden bridge that has been set alight by the sinister Vadoma (pronounced “Vadooma,” I think). This sequence is preposterous and yet exciting, using skillful editing and special effects. Somehow Benjamin Walker and his co-stars here are even
convincing — well, as convincing as such goofiness could possibly be. “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” has nothing useful to observe about Abraham Lincoln, slavery, the Civil War or much of anything else. Blink and you may miss the detail that Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad essentially won the war for the North. But the movie doesn’t promise insights on such subjects. What it achieves is a surprisingly good job of doing justice to its title, and treating Lincoln with as much gravity as we can expect, under the circumstances.
— Roger Moore is a film critic for McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
— Roger Ebert is a film critic for The Chicago Sun-Times.