It’s official: Adam Sandler’s new movie sucks. You know how I can tell? Look at this publicity still.
See that bulbous tricep peeking out from Sandler’s Springstee-shirt? And the wiry, veiney forearms? Each muscle fiber is the tiny strangulation of a laugh.
There is nothing humor hates more than attractiveness. Comedy is supposed to be ugly, awkward and everyman. The minute it becomes aspirational—something you look up to rather than look down upon—it becomes Comedy Antimatter, a substance physically incapable of producing anything more than annoyance and confusion.
There’s a reason every famous comedian is unattractive. Would it be funny to see Will Farrell running around in his underwear if he had a six-pack and a two-tablespoon lumbar? It’s only funny if it seems like he doesn’t want you to see him that way.
This is why Brad Pitt and George Clooney have never been funny. Eddie Murphy, the closest thing to a good-looking comedian America has ever produced, is only funny when he’s wearing fat suits and fake moles. Alec Baldwin, probably the funniest actor on TV right now, didn’t even attempt humor when he was Teen Beat Baldwin. It’s only Jowl-Voice Baldwin that’s been able to pull it off
The most convincing evidence of this phenomena, though, is this motherfucker, who has spent the last seven years looking like a Cadillac in a rap video:
Vanity and comedy don’t mix. You have to circle A or B. This is probably why Hollywood hasn’t produced many funny women in the last 30 years. Hotness trumps funnyness, and a lack of hotness is an instant disqualification for getting anywhere near the business end of a working television or film camera. Tina Fey, the funniest woman on TV by Monique-sized leaps and bounds, is about as unattractive as TV will allow. Which means she’s, what, an 8 on the Bo Derek Index?
So add that to the mobius-list of double standards, ladies. If you’re hot enough to be on TV, you’re too hot to be funny. Drink it in. Then puke it up and go weigh yourself.
So anyway, fatten it back up, Sandler. Your ‘Friends’-era facial hair isn’t sufficiently deformatizing to save this film. And, considering the fact that your celluloid existence has so far replaced the term ‘lowest common denominator’ with ‘Adam Sandler movie’, you need all the jiggly, pimply help you can get.
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