Raising Sandler: 5 Memorable Parental Figures from Adam Sandler Movies
Whether you love him, or hate him, one thing is for sure: Adam Sandler will keep popping up in your New Releases on Netflix. At the beginning of last year he inked a deal with the platform to make 4 more movies, continuing a relationship that has already given us 6 Netflix originals including, The Ridiculous 6, The Week Of, and Murder Mystery.
If you’ve grown up with the Sandman, you’re probably familiar with the general premise of his films: the leading man (Sandler) is a screw up, and has to figure out how to be less of a screw up to so he can accomplish something, like passing every grade, and the stakes are high if he doesn’t: he’ll lose the company, or his grandmother will lose her home, or he’ll literally die. There’s also usually at least one character named O’Doyle, occasionally Rob Schneider saying “You can do it,” a character who dies, and, always and most importantly: it all works out in the end. By the time the end credits roll there’s no doubt you’ve experienced a Happy Madison film even if you don’t stick around to see the golf ball hit the glass.
But while all Sandler comedies are somewhat similar, not all the characters are built the same. And in particular, the parental figures are varied depending on what type of man-child Sandler is playing, and arguably, some of the Sandler-verse’s most memorable characters. Guiding a 30/40/50-something toward maturity is no small task, and these parents are up for the challenge.
Mama Boucher
While The Waterboy is problematic in a number of ways, Kathy Bates’ Mama Boucher is one of the less issue-laden characters. Overprotective, fiercely loving, and outspoken, Mama Boucher would do anything for her baby boy, and makes that known.
She’s first introduced dressed in a bright red polka dot dress and kitschy necklaces hacking the head off a catfish with a cleaver: dressed like a mid-century housewife with the cooking skills of a pioneer woman. She might be quick to tell her grown son and waterboy (Sbadler), “little girls are the devil” and “school is the devil” and basically anything she doesn’t want him to try is “the devil,” but she’s only doing it to scare him so she can protect him from dangerous things like foosball, and his love interest, Vicki Vallencourt.
While a lot of the movie can be forgotten, or should be, Mama Boucher certainly can’t be.
Marlin Whitmore
A salty former fisherman in 50 First Dates, Marlin Whitmore, spends his days convincing his daughter, Lucy, that it’s his birthday to protect her from the knowledge that she was in a car accident that destroyed her short term memory. Even if it means watching The Sixth Sense every single night.
Grizzled but with a soft spot for his children, Marlin is quick to step in when he thinks Henry (Sandler) is taking advantage of his daughter’s condition. But what really makes him memorable is the glimpses into his backstory: his weeks spent fishing, the Beach Boys song that was his and his wife’s, his dad-daughter outings to pick pineapples. Few Happy Madison parental-figures are so well developed.
By the end of the movie there’s just enough intrigue to want a Marlin Whitmore based prequel, but given the absence of Sandler’s character it seems unfortunately unlikely.
Chubbs
Chubbs isn’t an actual parent in Happy Gilmore, but he certainly has his work cut out for him trying to make Happy (Sandler) grow up and take golfing seriously. In his quest to make Happy a pro-golfer, he inevitably keeps losing his wooden hand, his real sturdy replacement for his real hand, which was bitten off by an alligator during a golfing tournament. Naturally it’s Happy who keeps knocking it off, and otherwise causing it to be damaged, and Chubbs, the ever-forgiving father figure, never spirals into what would be a warranted fit of rage over it.
The story takes a turn for Chubbs after a very successful mini-golf game where he’s finally able to get Happy to putt by telling him to go to his happy place. Having been taught the skills to win the tournament, Happy decides to show his appreciation by gifting Chubbs the head of the alligator that took his hand. Chubbs is so shocked by the sight of the gator head that he falls backwards and right out of a window to his death.
Sandler movies usually have a dead parent in there somewhere, but much like in Disney movies, we usually don’t get to know them, or they’re dead before the story starts. This untimely demise coupled with his comical mishaps and never-ending patience make Chubbs stand out in the Sandler-verse.
Sonny Koufax
You can’t really have a list about memorable parental figures without talking about Big Daddy. Played by Adam Sandler himself, Sonny Koufax haplessly becomes a father figure to his roommate’s 5-year-old son who shows up on his doorstep while his roommate is away in China.
This character is most memorable for doing all the wrong, but largely harmless things you could do with a kid: giving him too much sugar, allowing him to forgo bathing, and not even bothering to change the sheets when he wets the bed: newspaper on top solves everything. Even if you haven’t seen the whole movie, you’ve probably seen the scene where the kid, Julian, is taught to throw sticks in front of rollerbladers in Central Park by Sonny, resulting in them tripping and taking a dip into the pond. In the end, as in every Sandler comedy, everything works out, and Julian’s father takes custody of him, but Sonny, of course, remains in his life getting to be the “fun” uncle.
Rosie
If you haven’t had the pure joy of seeing Rosie in The Wedding Singer you should stop reading right now and go amend that. She is determined to learn to sing for her 50th wedding anniversary and insists on paying her instructor Robbie Hart (Sandler) in meatballs. And, of course, watching him eat them.
That’s memorable enough, but just to make sure you don’t forget her she’ll scar you a little with her frank questions about intercourse, and cap off the movie with a little old lady rapping. Of all the Sandler parental figures her performance is the least likely to be forgotten.
