I’m not sure Adam Sandler is capable of doing a bad set. Four decades into his career, I think he might be too much of a pro. Asking him to do stand-up badly would be like asking a master carpenter to make a chair badly. The work, after all those years, comes so naturally that doing it wrong would actually be harder. In his new stand-up special, Adam Sandler: Love You, it’s there in the title, that kind of glib “of course” quality—the dismissive way you say “love you” to a parent is the way you say it to Adam Sandler. Like, come on, of course.
At a breezy one hour and 14 minutes, Love You is directed by Josh Safdie, the same guy who co-directed Sandler in Uncut Gems, and it opens with the same blue-lit, rain-drenched noir grit Safdie’s so good at coughing up, though perhaps this one rides less on frenetic anxiety than bustle. Nicolette Larson croons her 1978 hit “Lotta Love,” as Sandler, in full beard and sweats, appears behind a cracked windshield, driving up to an alley full of autograph seekers and entering a dive of a venue crowded with people with too many demands and too little time to have them honored (you might recognize a few of the non-actors Safdie used in Gems here). Various elements of the stage are falling apart, the monitors don’t work, and a dog shows up at one point—it’s a mess. It’s a cute contradictory conceit, the image of a journeyman comedian who is still willing to play a shithole (“Who booked this place?”) for the love of it, reminiscent of Sandler’s lifelong swindler in Gems. Except this is also one of the most famous comedians in the world worth many multiple millions—he’s signing Happy Gilmore jerseys backstage in this, his second Netflix special—no one would dare give this guy the wrong sweetener unless it was scripted.
When Chris Rock attended the shambolic Love You show, he didn’t buy it. According to Safdie in Indiewire, Rock said, “I know Sandler, and he would have broken everyone’s neck.” But Sandler’s private ambition and discipline is not something the wider world associates with him, or that he particularly broadcasts through his work or public appearances (red carpets often have him looking like he’d rather be anywhere else). He has always had this knack for giving the impression of being an unassuming hang (I have a friend whose basketball game he once just dropped in on, which seems a thing Sandler does to keep engaged in the world). Sandler appears so at home on stage it’s like he’s in his own living room, which makes me think of what Safdie said about the special’s entirely constructed set: “It had a real vibe in there. You really do feel like you’re there hanging out with your friends.” Sandler lands joke after joke like it’s nothing, each one almost running into the other, no fanfare, just a solid stream. “We needed that one,” he quips after a song about his sister’s ugly boyfriend—the music is all co-written by Saturday Night Live’s Dan Bulla, who performs alongside him. And even though at 57, Sandler has aged out of the little boy stuff—the Botox dick joke, the recurring theme of wives punishing their husbands, old women being gross (masturbating to the raisin box lady made me laugh, though)—he still does it. He’s not too big to do it.
There’s a point with some artists where, if they get too renowned, they have nothing left to say. Sandler seems aware of this trap and mostly sticks to the role of ... I don’t know how else to put it but, domesticated cowboy. One of my favorite bits in Love You is a Mariachi-style tune he plays on the guitar—complete with cracking whip sounds—in which the “hero” spends the whole time muttering about household chores, a kind of tamed suburbanite buckaroo (there are a number of points in the special where the Sandman, disarmingly, can’t keep from laughing at his own jokes, and this is one of them). He also does a funk tune about an old guy having a kid and then a bit about a guy with a backpack in a movie theater, which reminded me of Larry David, who is also really good at keeping it accessible even within his wealthy environs. I wouldn’t mind a granular breakdown of the surprisingly sophisticated bit that unravels out of the weird spelling of the word “answer,” in which Merriam-Webster’s mom asks him to let his useless brother have a go, and it turns into a digressive associative piece full of arbitrarily spelled words.
This kind of on-stage ease is the opposite of what has been overrepresented in stand-up comedy of late. The louder, overwhelmingly male comics of Sandler’s stature seem to have succumbed to a strange humorlessness. It’s as though they believe their age and platform necessitate a pivot towards “wizened” gravity. These comedians don’t do sets, they opine. They aren’t funny, they are didactic. Ironically, some of these guys appear in Love You right at the end in a sort of appreciation montage—that’s the kind of collegial guy Sandler is. Rob Schneider also pops up on stage as Elvis, which becomes slightly less bizarre when you are aware of their relationship. “There’s not been a week in 30 years where he doesn’t check in on me,” Schneider, who also appears in so many of Sandler’s films, recently told People magazine. The last song, though, is actually kind of beautiful. It feels like sour grapes to analyze something that is so clearly from the heart about Sandler’s love for comedy and what its community has brought him, but the chorus is a little clunky, and that’s OK (I mean, it made me cry, which is what it seems designed to do). Either way, it offers a good segue to the final moment of the special, where Sandler steps offstage, his hoodie up like a prizefighter, and into the arms of his wife, Jackie.
Adam Sandler, the family guy who can still win every round. Who doesn’t love that guy?
