The Longest Yard (2005)

Winding up in jail after a drunken car crash, an ex-football player and man-generally-making-a-giant-mess-of-his-life Paul Crewe (Sandler) is coerced by the prison warden to coach a football team made up of prisoners, but things become complicated in this remake of the 1974 original when this reluctant coach becomes torn between wanting his ragtag team of prisoners to win an upcoming game versus prison guards (and so redeeming himself after so much failure) and succumbing to pressure from the prison warden to let the prison staff win.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Murder Mystery 2 (2022)

Not as sophisticated a mystery as the plot of a Murder, She Wrote episode, this sequel to Netflix's 2019 Murder Mystery at least improves on that original, generating a few laughs and keeping the pace brisk and the length blessedly short as Nick and Audrey Spitz end up on a tropical island for a wedding where a murderer strikes.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Murder Mystery (2019)

Adam Sandler not acting like a moron and Jennifer Aniston doing what she always does makes for a likeable pair of sleuths here but the writing is so lazy, the murder mystery plot aboard a luxury boat so run-of-the-mill, the assembled suspects (played by a surprising array of big name stars) so lacking in characterisation beyond exaggerated nationality, deformity, or idiosyncracy, and the denouement so underwhelming, so bemusing - in fact so boring - viewers will only continue watching to the end either because they're tied to their chair or because they vainly hope this Netflix offering will dish up a final twist or surprise or something, anything!, to unlock the great mystery: how Netflix sustains its subscription service when it serves up dross like this so lazily thrown together you almost suspect it has been released unfinished.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Pixels (2015)

It doesn't know whether it wants to appeal to kids of the 80s or simply to kids and so for the former it is too childish and for the latter it is inappropriately adult, but if you are a kid of the 80s nostalgic for old-school video games and can look past horrible sexism and scenes of troubling male pack-mentality bullying and sleaze, this comedy about a world under attack by 80s video games is often funny.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Jack and Jill (2011)

As the credits roll, voxpops are shown of actual twins discussing twindom as though the preceding movie, which has Adam Sandler playing fraternal twins Jack and Jill, was a celebration of twin-love and not an unfunny embarrassment for everyone involved (but especially mortifying for Katie Holmes as Jack's wife and Al Pacino in a career-low, appearing as himself.)

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Punch Drunk Love (2002)

Adam Sandler's novelty goods factory floor manager grapples with his temper, his overbearing sisters, his new romance with Emily Watson, and a flawed coupon competition that sees him stockpiling crazy amounts of pudding, in this oddball but deeply affecting comedy drama, director Paul Thomas Anderson's - and Sandler's - best movie to date.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS