3. Adam Sandler - Reign Over Me
There is a WhatCulture! article entitled "Punch Drunk Love: An Underrated Masterpiece", and I would recommend you read it as soon as possible because Punch Drunk Love really deserves more recognition within PT Anderson's filmography, not least of all for rendering the slobbering ass-yak that is Adam Sandler watchable and even likeable! He barely slobbers at all in the film, and when he does, he does it tastefully and in tune with an Aimee Mann song. Sandler's were so uniformly panned prior to Punch Drunk Love that it is hard to imagine how he felt, receiving positive notices for this first time in his entire career. But obviously it left him with a taste for more, leading inexorably to his appearance in Mike Binder's Reign Over Me, the tale of a 9/11 widower's decent into self-destruction. The film itself is not entirely artless; the story is a worthwhile one, analysing the impossible task of a man faced with living after his entire life is utterly destroyed by chance. How could the 9/11 families cope? What would it be like, trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered existence? And with another lead, Reign Over Me could be an emotionally engaging film, but I'm afraid that the casting of Sandler renders that goal impossible. He chooses for his character a high-pitched nasal voice which seems taken directly from one of his stock of putrid caricatures. He walks about dressed like a middle-aged pervert at a Paramore concert. And when asked to look sad, he crumples his face inwards like a testicle exposed to cold water. I cannot fathom what Mike Binder was thinking with the casting here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkMwuPpLpz8