You can say one thing about Adam Sandler — he looks out after his own kind. Professional relationships between performers who once appeared on “Saturday Night Live” have always bordered on incestuous, but Sandler has pretty much turned it into the basis for his super successful Happy Madison banner, dedicated to giving the non-stars of “SNL” their own shot at fame, whether they deserve it (Dana Carvey) or not (David Spade).
This generosity, combined with the failure of the current “SNL” cast to generate any major box office stars, has led to “I Hate You Dad.” Sandler is recruiting Sandler-esque manchild Andy Samberg to play his son (despite the two of them separated by just over a decade in age) in a comedy where the two find themselves living under one roof right before the son’s impending nuptials, with the father butting heads with the bride-to-be. It sounds a whole lot like the family-clash storyline of Sandler’s 2011 release “Jack and Jill,” which finds Sandler starring alongside himself as his own sister. This one, however, is a David Caspe script being rewritten by “The State” alumni David Wain and Ken Marino, so it’s already guaranteed to be funnier than half of Sandler’s movies so far. The project is still in development stages, no director is attached just yet and it’s one of a handful Sandler has in the works so no guarantees it will be his next film.
Samberg is pretty much exactly like Sandler in his silly voices and wacky non-sequiter-based shtick geared towards the twelve year olds who stayed up too late. Like Sandler, he specializes in gags that seem to lampoon the very nature of the set-up/payoff structure of comedy skits, and like Sandler, he’s gotten by on “SNL” thanks to a strong group of co-writers, in this case the “Lonely Island” team of Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer. While Sandler broke through with the infectiously silly “Billy Madison” (maybe the last time Sandler’s onscreen act had any joy to it), Samberg was a star of a debut feature that was similarly equal parts incredibly stupid and inspired, 2007’s “Hot Rod.” Despite not being as amusing as a movie with Samberg, Taccone, Danny McBride, Bill Hader, Isla Fisher and Chris Parnell should be, “Hot Rod” probably has more laughs than Sandler’s entire filmography. To that we say, cool beans.
