Seriously, what's the deal with Adam Sandler?

Adam Sandler

Like most people who came of age in the '90s I first became aware of Adam Sandler when he was on Saturday Night Live.

He wasn't as versatile as Mike Myers or as incisive as Chris Rock, but he had a certain dopey charm that was undeniably appealing. I never would have expected him to be one of the most consistent comedy draws at the box office in the ensuing decade though.

His early comedies -- while fondly remembered -- were all sort of flops, or at least they weren't exactly hits. This, at the time, gave Sandler a sort of underground appeal.

Movies like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore were just self-aware enough that audiences sort of knew what they were watching was best enjoyed on the small screen after a few beers.

But then The Wedding Singer happened. It was an adorable crossover hit that showed some real vulnerability from Sandler and proved he could be a mainstream movie star. And it's when everything went kind of wrong.

I remember being excited for his follow up and then I saw the trailer for The Waterboy (a movie I've still never seen from beginning to end) and I thought -- ughh. Is this character supposed to be mentally challenged? It looked so painfully unfunny that I passed on it and wrote it off as Sandler just looking to cash in on his newfound fame.

But then came Big Daddy and Mr. Deeds and Click and Grown Ups, and a host of other highly profitable but pretty pathetic "comedies" which Sandler barely walks through. He'd become a modern version of latter-day Burt Reynolds, smirking at his own cleverness while a familiar crew of sidekicks did all the heavy lifting.

Oddly enough, in Judd Apatow's interesting but indulgent Funny People, Sandler seemed to be playing a self aware parody of himself and yet he continued to make soulless trash -- the most recent example of which, the critically reviled Pixels, has just flopped hard.

The one bright, shining outlier -- his Oscar-worthy (I'm not joking) performance in Punch Drunk-Love. He was a revelation in this 2002 black comedy, winning the best reviews of his career in a collaboration with one of cinema's most original voices -- P.T. Anderson. Even though the film wasn't a commercial success, Sandler had a chance to show real growth as an actor.

Instead he returned to his comfort zone. Now this was in part because other attempts at dramedy (Reign Over Me and the recent Men Women & Children) bombed badly. So are we the audience, to blame, in part?

Film snobs recoil and his endless box office resilience. Even after the failure of Jack & Jill and That's My Boy, he was able to get ticket buyers to shell out millions for the unimaginative Grown Ups 2.

He's 48 now; plenty of critics have said he has outgrown the sophomoric films he stars in. And yet, he is still one of the few consistent A-list draws around.

Will he ever dare to team up with a real talented writing and directing team again? At the very least his career needs a real reboot. But the thing is that so much of Sandler's persona seems to be steeped in his appearance to "not care."

Think about every Sandler late-night show appearance you've ever seen, Despite being a millionaire many times over, he always appears unwashed in cheap looking denim and a T-shirt. In fact, I don't know if I've ever seen him in a suit outside of a couple of his films.

Clearly, he is comfortable with what he's become, even if those of us who used to be fan aren't.