Adam Sandler Gives Surprisingly Poignant Performance In Netflix Film ‘The Meyerowitz Stories’ Debuting At Cannes

Adam Sandler stars in a poignant new Netflix-backed film, The Meyerowitz Stories, that made its debut at Cannes.

ADAM SANDLER IN THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES AT CANNES

Sandler stars alongside Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Candice Bergen, and Emma Thompson in this family drama by Noah Baumbach. The movie follows the Meyerowitz family under patriarch Harold (Hoffman), an artist who is angry that the world has not acknowledged his genius. Sandler plays his son Danny, a middle-aged loser who recently split from his wife.

Danny lives his life for his daughter Eliza, who studies filmmaking in college, but always has to deal with his father’s disappointment in him. Not to mention his half-brother’s (Stiller) successes as a businessman.

Hoffman and Sandler are receiving rave reviews from the Cannes audience, with the latter coming a long way from his Happy Gilmore days. The film has almost a literary feel to it, with pointed dialogue and a realistic family. Baumbach exposes the characters’ weaknesses and unlikability early on, and then paints them in a better light in the second half of the film.

While it is unsurprising to see Hoffman in a good role, many are pleasantly surprised to see Sandler play such a character. “It’s been a long time coming but Adam Sandler is finally in a good film,” said Robbie Collin’s review in The Telegraph. “Sandler has been bad in so many awful films that when he’s terrific in a great one, it’s both a revelation and a windfall – like you’re digging around at the back of the garden shed for the first time in years and find a Picasso propped up against the wallpaper steamer.”

“Wow, Adam Sandler might actually belong in Cannes,” writes Steve Pond of The Wrap, while some critics are calling that Sandler will receive his first Oscar nomination in this role. “It’s odd to think that the company responsible for Sandy Wexler and The Ridiculous Six could conceivably earn Sandler his first Oscar nomination — and his best role since Punch-Drunk Love played Cannes in 2002,” added Peter Debruge of Variety.