Just when we thought the wave of board game movies announced a few years ago would mostly retract back into the Ocean of Bad Ideas, Hasbro has announced (via Deadline) a partnership with Columbia Pictures to resurrect the Candy Land movie as an Adam Sandler family film directed by Enchanted‘s Kevin Lima. More after the jump.

Though the movie was once envisioned as “Lord of the Rings, but set in a world of candy,” the original screenwriters have moved on from the project. Now, the approach has drastically changed. Doug Belgrad, President of Columbia Pictures, described the new take:

Candy Land is more than just a game. It is a brand that children, parents and grandparents know and love. The world of Candy Land offers an extraordinary canvas upon which to create a fantastical, live-action family adventure film with a larger than life part for Adam.

It’s clear that this movie is going to be aimed at a younger generation, but the thought of board game movies still makes me shudder. Sandler and Robert Smigel are set to write the new version of the script, but there’s no word on the start of production yet.

We’ve got Battleship due in theaters in May of this year, and the success or failure of that film not only has huge implications for Universal (who has reportedly put over $200 million into the project), but also for the future of other board game films in Hollywood. Ridley Scott was once attached to direct a Monopoly movie, and a Ouija film is currently being re-written by Fright Night screenwriter Marti Noxon but has no studio home as of yet. In the Candy Land announcement, Hasbro chief Brian Goldner mentions that a film based on the popular board game Risk is still in development, but no talent has been attached at this point. Thankfully, there has been no update on the View-Master movie since its initial announcement.

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Remember back when Adam Sandler used to star in good comedies that actually made you laugh and could be enjoyed by the entire family? Well I do and while box office success doesn’t always equal quality, in the case of Mr. Sandler, some of his best comedies also happen to be his biggest hits.

This top 10 ranks his most successful movies based on their North American gross. I chose that instead of worldwide because Adam Sandler wasn’t so popular with international audiences at the end of the 90′s and the first part of the 2000′s, so it wouldn’t be fair for films like The Waterboy or Mr. Deeds.

10. Bedtime Stories (2008) $110.1 million – Certainly not one of his worst but neither was it good in any way or shape.

9. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) $120 million – Usual Adam Sandler flick, if you’re a fan of his comedies check it out, if not this won’t win you over.

8. 50 First Dates (2004) $120.9 million – This is the second time Adam Sandler teamed up with Drew Barrymore after the success of The Wedding Singer (that we won’t find in this top 10 since it made $80.2 million). 50 First Dates is definitely an Adam Sandler fan favorite, one of his best movies. Maybe it would be a good idea for him to make another flick with Drew Barrymore, it worked out great the first two times.

7. Mr. Deeds (2002) $126.2 million – Make no mistake, this is a dumb movie but unlike what Adam Sandler makes today, this is good dumb and actually packs some real laughs.

6. Anger Management (2003) $135.6 million – This was one of my favorite Adam Sandler movies back when it came out and while I wouldn’t appreciate it today the same way I did 8 years ago, it certainly isn’t a bad movie. Jack Nicholson is one to watch here.

5. Click (2006) $137.3 million – This movie has its share of toilet jokes but among Adam Sandler comedies, it’s probably the last really good one he made. A fun flick for the entire family, Click is a must watch for any Adam Sandler fan.

4. The Longest Yard (2005) $158.1 million – A remake of the 1971 Burt Reynolds classic, The Longest Yard is another really fun Adam Sandler movie, among his best for me at least.

3. The Waterboy (1998) $161.4 million – This movie takes stupid to a whole new level and you know what, I liked it. It knows it’s stupid and embraces that in ways that makes this another Adam Sandler classic.

2. Grown Ups (2010) $162 million – A rather large comedic ensemble (Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David Spade, Steve Buscemi) should have made this at least somewhat entertaining. What we get instead are forced laughs for what is simply a mediocre and rarely funny movie.

1. Big Daddy (1999) $163.4 million – Well deserving of the top spot, Big Daddy is a classic Adam Sandler comedy with a huge heart that can be enjoyed by everyone with a sense of humor.

As you can see Adam Sandler has found great success with his brand of comedies but for me at least, Reign Over Me, a drama, is my favorite movie among his work. Reign Over Me was a remarkable film that showed a very different Adam Sandler proving that he can do a lot better than the dribble we see him in today.

So what is your favorite and least favorite Adam Sandler movie, comment below.

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Al Pacino saves the day, or in this case, 95 minutes of what 1991’s Double Impact would have been like if it wasn’t an action flick.  Plus, how funny – or ironic – is it that this Adam Sandler cross-dressing comedy opens the same day as J. Edgar?  Happy Madison…always thinking.

Except in this comedy; which may be the most off-kilter movie in recent memory.  One minute you’re SUPPOSED to be laughing and the very next you feel completely sorry for a character.  And in between all that are fart jokes and bits that would only please the Sandler loyal and/or kids in the public school system…in the South.  Yet with all that being said, somehow Jack and Jill garners a few chuckles in all its misguided randomness.

Jack (Adam Sandler) is a commercial director out in Los Angeles.  The guy does fairly well for himself career-wise, but must pull off a miracle not lose his biggest client, Dunkin Donuts.  You see the franchise wants Jack to lure the great Al Pacino into doing their next big promotion.  Since Jack has no way of reaching Pacino, he begins to panic.  But that’s not what bogs down his mind the most at the moment.

His single and obnoxious twin sister, Jill (Adam Sandler in drag), is coming to town for a few days and let’s just say she has a knack for driving him crazy.  While his two young kids (Elodie Tougne & Rohan Chand) adore their awkward Aunt Jill, Jack’s wife, Erin (Katie Holmes) is urging him to keep it together and be sensitive to his lonely sister.

Well as the two bicker and say hurtful things to each other, it turns out that Al Pacino has a thing for Jill.  Jack notices this as well, and despite Pacino’s persistent and psycho advances on his aloof sister, Jack tries to steer this in the right direction in order to book the heralded, and unpredictable, actor for his commercial.

The heart of the script is seeing how the two siblings can come together and put aside their differences around the holiday season.  It’s just done in such a generic fashion that it begs the question of what’s the point.  When the story isn’t unfolding at Jack’s nice mansion, there are sequences on cruise ships, restaurants, and even inside Pacino’s humble abode.  And this particular Sandler production may have set a record for cameos (Johnny Depp, Regis Philbin, Shaquille O’Neal, John McEnroe etc., all playing themselves) along with his Saturday Night Live cohorts (Tim Meadows, Norm MacDonald, Dana Carvey, and David Spade – who you may not recognize), and his usual Happy Madison folk.  There are also a slew of other celebs that show up for no apparent reason other than to keep the audience people watching.  And that applies to all of the above mentioned save for Spade and surprisingly Johnny Depp, who try to do a little something in their brief scenes.  In the end though, the only reason to pay any money to see this sucker is Al Pacino.

Pacino is unhinged and makes the most out of nothing.  In all the cameos where the actors have portrayed themselves, this ranks right up there with Bill Murray’s in a relatively recent horror-spoof.  Pacino is carrying this piece just as much as Sandler is carrying fake breasts and assorted pockets of a fat suit.  Sandler is recalling one of his old character voices from one his famed comedy CDs from the ‘90s in acting out Jill.  And even though his (or her) facial expressions are at times priceless, the bit is severely under-developed.  This becomes evident after a struggling extended dinner table convo that never strikes the right chord.  Hell, it can barely find the right octave.  The only aspect to admire is how clean the CG is when both normal Sandler and drag Sandler are in the same shot.  It really does look like two different actors are at work.

Overall, Jack and Jill is a royally confused on whether it wants to be a holiday movie or a typical post- Big Daddy Happy Madison production.  One minute it is ruthless and cruel and the next its stereotypical Sandler material (which can still draw out a smile here and there).  Obviously, they tried to do both yet it never comes together at all.  If one takes pleasure in going through sudden mood swings during their movie-watching, then this could be your cinematic Christmas present.  Again though, Al Pacino works wonders and his presence alone enables this shattered and lackluster screenplay to be tolerable.

I can’t wait to see the final cut.

Rating:  2 out of 5

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A year from now when I look back at the films of 2011, I will remember Just Go With It for one dubious reason alone: it is one of two “comedies” I’ve ever seen in which I literally didn’t crack a smile during its entire duration.

Just Go With It actually impressed me. I was expecting it to be terrible, and it was somehow worse: it was unwatchable. Every character is unlikeable, every beat is telegraphed, and worst of all, it was painfully unfunny. I know this might offend some people, but Just Go With It targets an entire subset of the population I never want to encounter: the absolute dumbest, trashiest crowd who cackles at nutshots and roars with raucous laughter at jokes that could have been written by a 10-year-old. It’s almost hard to hate the movie when people next to me are giggling like idiots as a child runs his head into Sandler’s balls in the equivalent of a Chuck E. Cheese’s and yells, “Mommy, that man put his pee pee on my face!”, because there is clearly an audience out there for this kind of “comedy”. But it’s the worst possible audience, and the few douchebags sitting next to me laughing are the reason the cinematic landscape is filled with this type of bullshit year after year while the studios laugh all the way to the bank and executives pat themselves on the back for another job well done.

The marketing for this film goes out of its way to reach out to a male audience. Along with objectifying women in the most blatant way possible (slow motion shots of model Brooklyn Decker coming out of the water in a bikini while everyone stares slack-jawed), commercials command men to “tell your girlfriend it’s a romantic comedy,” implying that secretly the film is actually something else, perhaps interesting or different from what we expect. Unfortunately that’s not the case at all – if you told your girlfriend it’s a romantic comedy, you’d just be telling her the truth. And not only that, it’s the worst kind of romantic comedy, one with a formula more stale than a month-old bag of pretzels. And whatever, Sony: if it’s a romantic comedy, that’s fine – but don’t act like you’re letting us in on something and then give us a pile of cinematic crap with zero redeeming qualities. Take your bait-and-switch tactics and shove ‘em.

I’m not one of those people who will try to claim Sandler has never been in anything good before. I dug Funny People (though it was about an hour too long) and I found many of his early films legitimately interesting from a character standpoint (even if he plays overgrown man-children in many of them). But in recent years, the guy’s been making movies that look more like the fake movies from the filmography of his character in Funny People than real films. Here, he’s the same character he’s played in almost every movie of the past decade, with no attempt to separate himself from that stereotype in any way. If this is one of America’s favorite box office comedy stars, I weep for our country.

In a plot so stupid it makes my head hurt, a jilted Sandler uses a fake wedding ring to get women (just like that episode of “Seinfeld”). He flaunts his conquests to his assistant (Aniston, who we’re supposed to think is average looking), a single mom with two kids. But when Sandler meets a 23-year-old elementary school teacher named Palmer (Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker in her feature debut), he inexplicably seems to have decided this is the woman of his dreams. Though since they have no real connection or meaningful conversation, this point seems questionable at best. Of course, complications quickly arise when Palmer discovers his fake ring. Instead of telling her that he’s divorced – common sense, right? – Sandler reveals that he’s about to be divorced, and through a series of nonsensical demands presumably justified by the writers just speaking the title of this movie aloud, Palmer wants to meet everyone involved (and apparently spend as much time with them as possible). Naturally, a fake family dynamic is set up, and who better to use than Aniston as Sandler’s fake wife?

This movie is so bad I found it hard to convince myself it was a real movie while watching it. The acting was so forced from everyone – including vets like Sandler and Aniston – and there was no passion to be found in the entire thing. Technically speaking, it looked horrible: flat, visually uninteresting, staged. A majority of the movie takes place in Hawaii (the result of yet another series of unfunny jokes and Sandler’s character’s seemingly unending bank account), and there director Dennis Dugan (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, The Benchwarmers) managed another improbable feat: making a movie with Hawaiian locations boring to watch. The actors seemed as if they were simply going through the motions, but it’s even worse when you can tell there’s no zest from the crew behind the scenes either.

While Sandler and Aniston gave performances in line with their recent work, model Brooklyn Decker rose to the challenge of filling out a bikini – and that’s about it. Her actions make the least sense of any character in any movie in recent memory. Comedian Nick Swardson brought his usual over-the-top brand of comedy to his role, but showed no spark of life even in the most ridiculous scene, which involved performing CPR on a poorly designed fake sheep. Watching Nicole Kidman and Dave Matthews was akin to seeing someone you love being tortured. Sure, they played despicable characters, but their acting was downright reprehensible. And many of you are probably aware of my hatred of most children in movies, but the two that are featured here are some of the most annoying in cinematic history (one speaks in a repulsive faux-British accent the whole time, the other is quiet but a potential sociopath).

If you’ve seen two or three rom-coms in your life, you know exactly how this is going to end. Mark Twain once said, “I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which really happened.” Unfortunately for us all, this movie really happened. If you respect your time on Earth, you won’t waste it on Just Go With It. Until next time…

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Alright, folks! I was told by Liam, my fierce English Editor that Funny People, Judd Apatow’s third directorial effort, doesn’t hit the UK until much later even though it opened here last weekend. What does that mean for you Europeans? It means I still have time to save you the price of a ticket by reviewing Funny People.

Funny People is a long film, about 150 minutes long, and commits the cardinal sin of a movie with such a length: it feels that long.

I see a lot of movies, some in the theater, some on TV pay channels and some streamed to my computer through the magic of the internet. In the month of July, I somehow avoided seeing horrible movies, which had started to concern me. “What if I’ve lost all critical perspective and lowered my bar by actually enjoying Transformers 2, never again to be trustworthy or insightful?,” I selfishly thought to myself. Good news: I didn’t like Funny People, which means I have re-calibrated my critical barometer.

Then again, just trashing the movie for no apparent reason doesn’t make any sense, so I suppose I should back up my claim that Funny People isn’t worth your 150 minutes.

Funny People is the story of fictional comedian George Simmons, played by Adam Sandler because Simmons essentially IS Adam Sandler. George used to be a comedian until he became a studio whore making movies like Re-Do where he’s trapped in the body of an infant or Merman where he is a MerMan. The film even starts off with home videos of Sandler shot by Apatow when the two used to live together. It’s an odd thing to mix real Sandler with fictional Simmons they way Apatow does, because Funny People is a big studio movie directed by hot-shit-Apatow with Apatow-golden-boy Seth Rogen in it featuring cameos by real-life comedians. At some point in the film, you’ll notice that people talk about George Simmons and your brain hears “Adam Sandler.” The guy was everywhere in the late 90s and early 00s, mostly making the kind of crap he’s now apologizing for with this thin “character.”

Simmons gets Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a rare cancerous blood disease I wrote an after-school special about once. Safe to say it’s horrible and can kill you fast. When Sandler decides to go back-to-basics and do more stand up, he hires Ira Wright (Rogen) oblivious when Ira screws his roommate (Jonah Hill as Leo) out of a co-writing gig. Sandler asks for both Ira and Leo, but Ira never makes the offer to his friend, coveting the job for himself because he is a lesser comedian and hasn’t been able to pay rent at the apartment he shares with Leo and Jason Schwartzman’s Mark.

Sandler tells Ira that he’s dying but asks the young comedian to keep it to himself and write some jokes for him.

That is the first movie in Funny People, a film that is actually two movies squished into one premise. The first half of the film is a portrait of the lives of famous comedians juxtaposed against the lives of up-and-coming comedians struggling to get work so they don’t have to serve cold cuts at the local deli.

The second movie in Funny People starts when Sandler tries to re-connect with the love of his life Laura (played by Leslie Mann) who left Sandler when he cheated on her and ran off to marry an Australian businessman Clarke (played by Eric Bana). When Laura thinks Sandler is dying, they re-connect, then Sandler is cured but Laura still thinks she’s in love with him. When Clarke returns from a business trip early, Ira and Sandler are stuck in Laura’s house with Laura’s family as Sandler attempts to steal Clarke’s wife out from under him and his daughters (the Apatow girls, a pleasure as always).

Yes, it’s a very unexpected and abrupt change in plot and tone, but this is Judd Apatow’s “death” movie. His first directorial effort, The 40 Year Old Virgin, dealt with love and sexual innocence. Steve Carrell played that part with enough aw-shucks and childish glee that it worked and played well to a young audience. Knocked Up was Apatow’s way of bringing his Freaks & Geeks mentality into adulthood by having Rogen’s stoner slacker learn responsibility the old fashioned way: by putting his baby up in someone. This film advances Apatow’s themes a bit further. All the characters are trying to make something of themselves (something Virgin and Knocked Up’s leads weren’t doing) and get cut short by questions of mortality.

I can see the appeal in doing a story about death with comedians at the center, but the film doesn’t really work that way. On the outside it seems great: would you rather talk death with a comedian or Al Pacino (with his needless yelling of late)? But the truth of the matter is much more sinister, because anyone who knows comedians will tell you that they are the most profoundly unhappy people you will ever meet. Sandler’s character sums it up best in one of his monologues where he says that he’s been trying to make his Dad laugh all his life and he had to be funny because you have to bring the jokes right before the old man beats the shit out of you. Funny people, REAL funny people not these Funny People, are the product of tragedy. A sense of humor is a survival technique for overweight children and social outcasts. As far as my opinion goes, that’s what kills the movie:

None of these characters are likable.

I can’t feel sorry that someone who was given everything through the trappings of fame is going to die, and I certainly don’t want to listen to 150 minutes of complaining if I think that person is a waste of space. And by the time the movie does decide to end, no one has really changed. They are all the same sad assholes we started the movie with.

I will now tell you why each character is a dick that doesn’t deserve to have a movie based around them.

George Simmons (Adam Sandler): The guy knowingly tricks star-fuckers into having sex with him, lives in a huge house with a large and faceless staff, treats Ira like crap, can’t actually emote to anyone and is SO selfish that he tries to break-apart Laura’s family without any thought of her kids and life. Worst of all, he ends that snafu by blaming Ira. Maybe it’s that Sandler has profoundly annoyed me with everything after “Piece Of Shit Car,” but if Adam Sandler were to really be diagnosed with cancer, I think we’d all agree that his great contributions to comedy are behind him.

Ira Wright (Seth Rogen): Not only does the guy refuse to share his job with his much funnier roommate, but his love story with female comedian Daisy (Aubrey Plaza) consists of two scenes of arguing and one scene of a SINGLE kiss. I understand this guy wants to be a comedian real bad and doesn’t want to work at the deli to make ends meet, but HEY that’s life, Ira. Suck it up. There’s also a part that barely gets referenced where Ira takes credit for one of Leo’s jokes. Joke thief as well? Usually Rogen’s characters have some degree of nerdy likeability to them, but Ira is a doormat until the last 10 minutes of the film. I wanted to slap him around several times in this movie (and even more so in the second movie squeezed into this movie).

Laura (Leslie Mann): Not only is Laura a bitch the first time we see her on screen, but she glows red like she just got a chemical peel when we see her again. Outside of this being Leslie Mann’s worst role in one of her husband’s movies, Laura is a miserable portrait of a woman. She’s the pivotal character in the film’s tonal switch, because when she shows up the film stops being a mediocre comedy and begins being something resembling a mid-life crisis drama. She’s ready to kick her husband out of the house and move her kids to LA so she can re-start her acting career and somehow never manages to see through George’s exterior to notice that he’s not a family person.

Clarke (Eric Bana): Bana works his ass off in this role. At first we’re supposed to hate him, then we’re supposed to sympathize with him, then he’s supposed to make us feel better about his home life just in time for the movie to end. He tries, he tries so hard. But – again – his character ends up right back where he was at the beginning of the movie when the credits roll thanks to some sudden “karma” lines that are supposed to make everyone forget they’re all traumatizing his kids.

There’s one good character in the film, and that’s Eminem as himself. He tells Sandler that death was George’s way out of the lifestyle his stardom has brought about. Hearing those words come out of Eminem’s stoic mug rung true. If the film’s overall message had a face, it’s that of Marshall Mathers: You may be successful, but no one is ever actually happy and no one can change.

What happened, Judd? This movie is populated with characters I couldn’t root for. The title promised comedy, but only delivered for the first 30 minutes. Everyone was the same at the end of the film (you might say Sandler had changed, but we never saw him cancer-free, so how will we know that?). It’s just a mess that has been assembled into a movie thanks to Apatow’s talent. The guy knows how to shoot a film and whatnot, but Jesus, this movie made me sad.

Judd Apatow films are usually comedies with a very real heart to them, but in Funny People that heart has been replaced by cameos and meta-humor. Then, about half-way through the heart dies and we’re challenged to root for either the selfish asshole trying to break apart a family or the cheating, borderline neglectful husband who is still an asshole, but a different kind.

What the hell?

What. The. Hell.

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Last week it was confirmed that Brad Pitt would lead Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards, making things a bit more interesting. However, the film could have been even more interesting if Adam Sandler wasn’t busy making more crappy comedies and had a role in the film. Sander confirmed to RTE.ie that the rumours are true and he was in fact approached by Quentin, has read the script, but had to decline the offer due to conflicting schedules.

“Yeah it’s true. It is, and I read the script, it’s fantastic. But I’m shooting at the very same time. I won’t be able to do it. [....] not going to happen, but I did read it. It is awesome. [...] I know Quentin for a long time. We’ve been talking about doing it for years, for like five, six, seven years.”

No word on who he would play, however seeing Adam Sander and Brad Pitt being directed by Quentin Tarantino would be something to see, especially if they were both brutally killing Nazis!

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ComingSoon.net received our first look at Adam Sandler in Bedtime Stories.

Bedtime Stories has quite a large cast consisting of Guy Pearce, Keri Russell, Richard Griffiths, Courteney Cox, Lucy Lawless, Teresa Palmer, Russell Brand, Aisha Tyler and Jonathan Pryce.

Sandler plays Skeeter Bronson, a hotel handyman whose life is changed forever when the bedtime stories he tells his niece and nephew start to mysteriously come true. He attempts to take advantage of the phenomenon, incorporating his own aspirations into one outlandish tale after another, but it’s the kids’ unexpected contributions that turn Skeeter’s life upside down.

The film will be out on Christmas Day, although I’m sure people will have better things to be doing.

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