BILLY MADISON
(PG-13)
MOVIE: **** (out of 5)
BLU-RAY EXPERIENCE: **** (out of 5)
BY KEVIN CARR
There are some comedians in this world who actually made better films when they were young and immature. Both Kevin Smith and Adam Sandler fall into this category. A lot of it has to do with the fact that their best work tends towards the young and immature. Once they start growing as a film star, their more adult work comes out trite, overdone and sometimes just downright wretched.
“Billy Madison” is and continues to be one of my favorite Adam Sandler movie. It loses a bit out of the contemporary context, and it really fit better as a transition from his obnoxious “Saturday Night Live” characters than as a stand-alone film. But damn if this film doesn’t still make me laugh. The story of a idiot man-child who has to redo his entire education to prove his worth starts as crazy and obnoxious as you can get, but in the end it has a nice dose of heart and hilarious moments.
This is Adam Sandler at his best, and his latest films (like “Grown Ups” and “Just Go With It”) are cheap grabs at what once came so easily to him. In the modern context, Adam Sandler has just grown up a bit too much. And him making feeble attempts at the hilarity of “Billy Madison” feels more like the woman in her 40s trying to dress in the clothes that Hannah Montana made fashionable.
The recently-released Blu-ray includes all the DVD bonus features imported to this new disc. These include 25 minutes of deleted scenes, a set of outtakes and a feature commentary. Like some comedies, the outtakes and deleted scenes are actually worth watching because they’re funny and just didn’t fit in the final cut.