Copyright Chicago Tribune
We are currently entering a new Sandler Season, one of those brief occasional windows of time when we’re reminded that, hey, you know what, life’s too short, everyone likes Adam Sandler these days, he is no longer someone to shake heads about, he has grown on me, he makes some bad movies and he makes some smart movies, like everyone else — we might even root for him to win an Oscar for “Jay Kelly,” his upcoming Noah Baumbach drama with George Clooney and Laura Dern. Would he wear a hoodie and joggers to the Academy Awards? We would hope he would. I was thinking about this last night while I was walking into the United Center to see Sandler’s latest stand-up tour. As I waited to cross the street, I listened to a pair of traffic cops get into a confusing, but somehow relatable, argument about what’s actually endearing about Sandler. “He’s a good actor,” said one. “I think all these people are here because he’s funny,” said the other. “Funny?” “Yeah… Adam Sandler…. the comedian…” “Well, he’s a good actor, but I don’t know what’s funny about him.” Sandler’s new shows are titled the You’re My Best Friend Tour, and as awkward as that sounds, it’s a pretty spot-on way of describing a show so driven by the audience’s warmth and goodwill, it transcends what we typically expect of a performer. To put it bluntly, Sandler is not a particularly funny stand-up, and he never has been. He paces and arrives at jokes that sound half-remembered and talks in a speedy mumble. I would say about half the people seated around me never laughed out loud once. But they were smiling. Sandler has almost nothing new to say about the topics he’s talking about at 59 — growing old, surviving teenage daughters, stumbling through married sex. And yet somehow, it still kind of works — the way, say, a Dean Martin roast kind of works when you’re clicking around TV in the middle of the night and land on whatever that is. No, wait: Sandler live is like a filthy unaired episode of “A Prairie Home Companion.” Or like Sandler playing Sinatra, the ringleader, inviting us to a casual hang, telling a few jokes, breaking into a song with a piano player at his side — Chicago native Dan Bulla — welcoming some old friends to the stage, then after a solid couple of hours, everyone turns sentimental and talks about comedians who inspired them and friends who died. Just no politics, please. Only comfort. Sandler, of course, wore a baggy hoodie and joggers, and his audience was mostly burrowed into hoodies, joggers, hockey jerseys. There were catch phrases and harmonicas and silly glasses and mugging and sing-alongs and Sandler noodling on a guitar (pretty well, actually) and Rob Schneider in an astronaut suit and a short set from former Chicagoan, current “Saturday Night Live” cast member Sarah Sherman and a slightly longer set from David Spade. As if it wasn’t enough like a 1970s variety show, quarterback Caleb Williams of the Chicago Bears put in a quick cameo. Meanwhile, in the Dom Deluise slot, none other than Robert Smigel, the great comedy writer (and voice behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), dressed as the Pope, wearing a ceremonial mitre adorned with White Sox and the Bears logos, emerging from the floor, anointing the audience with his beer and asking Sandler to confess to once putting ketchup on a hot dog. Again, you’re not dying with laughter here, you’re definitely not hearing clever writing — you’re spending time with some fun people. But then, every now and again, Sandler would veer into a short story so offhandedly thoughtful and not especially funny, there’s got to be a nugget of truth in there somewhere. A child asks what happens when you die: “It feels like before you were born,” Sandler says and the child replies, “Oh.” Sandler is walking by a hotel pool when the only person swimming pleads, with the hushed meep of a bridge troll, “Come in.” One of his tunes simply listed world cities for a minute, then concluded with: We will travel the world together, but after the dog dies. (Which could be a Tom Waits song.) There’s a plaintive quality to Sandler’s best performances, an understated humility where he almost recedes into the woodwork and lets words just land. The final song was constructed as a series of thank yous to funny people who mattered to him. Being a child of the ‘70s, Gene Wilder was in there, and Ruth Buzzi, and Richard Pryor, and the “SNL” writer Jim Downey and Lorne Michaels, but also clips of The Three Stooges and Buster Keaton and his late friends Chris Farley and Norm Macdonald. If you’ve ever been to a party and it’s going long and people just start listing movies or bands they love, you get the idea. Everyone’s had enough, things are getting schmaltzy, the clock looms larger. At this point, Sinatra would build to the self-congratulations of “My Way.” Sandler goes instead for a bear hug, and it’s sweet, and just as corny — and so what? cborrelli@chicagotribune.com
