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.
