We Ranked Every Adam Sandler Movie To Remind You He Rules

Just because a movie calls itself “ridiculous” doesn’t excuse it from being abominable. One of Adam Sandler’s first major forays into streaming-release movies was the Western spoof The Ridiculous 6, a movie mired in controversy – a disputed number of Native actors walked off the set over its offensive humor – only to have the dubious recognition of earning 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Are critics being uptight? Just once, maybe trust them on this.

Adam Sandler could have sunk after his film debut in 1989, the seafaring dud Going Overboard. Predating his run on Saturday Night Live, Sandler’s first movie is his first as a leading man, and sees him play a cocktail waiter on a cruise ship who harbors lofty dreams of becoming the ship’s resident comedian. Budget production value doesn’t weigh down Going Overboard so much as Sandler’s painfully obvious inexperience sinks it.

Behold an Adam Sandler comedy that hasn’t just spoiled like milk, but is straight up radioactive. Sandler stars in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan as a top-rate soldier for the Israel Defense Force who abandons his post to pursue his dreams of becoming a hair stylist in America, where he falls for a Palestinian salon owner (played by Emmanuelle Chirqui). There’s no point in getting worked up over an almost 20-year-old comedy that’s dumber than rocks where the most memorable gag has Sandler smack a guy with a fake foot. But truly, what the hell was anyone thinking?

An empty calorie sequel to a comedy few liked in the first place, Grown Ups 2 lives to serve anyone who finds middle aged men in low-stakes crises to be the peak of modern entertainment. David Spade, Chris Rock, and Kevin James reunite with Adam Sandler for a rudderless second round that sees the grown men square off with a neighboring college fraternity. Why bother with Sandler waddling around in oversized basketball shorts when the infinitely better Neighbors with Seth Rogen and Zac Efron exists?

Somehow, Al Pacino saw fit to put in effort in Jack and Jill while Adam Sandler floats around on autopilot. Sandler does double duty playing both an ad executive and his intrusive twin sister who overstays her welcome during the holidays. There’s no other way to say it: Jack and Jill is bad. Really bad. But Pacino proves he’s one of the greatest actors of our time by making a meal out of his supporting role, where he plays himself caught up doing a lame Dunkin Donuts campaign. Sandler must have made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

A star-studded religious satire that makes a convincing argument for atheism, Little Nicky stars Adam Sandler as the “kindest” son of Satan (Harvey Keitel) who is sent to Earth to keep his brothers from wreaking havoc on a biblical scale. Nothing in Little Nicky, not even a giggling Reese Witherspoon in angel wings, can redeem the movie’s damned soul. A lethally annoying performance by Sandler is arguably the movie’s deadliest sin.

A movie adaptation of a divorced man’s Funko Pop collection, Pixels is a headache-inducing tentpole that doesn’t mine Generation X nostalgia so much as weaponizes it in a test of human endurance. Adam Sandler plays one of several grown-up arcade champions from Reagan’s America who are called by the President of the United States (Kevin James) to save the world from an alien invasion who’ve taken the form of classic video game monsters. Sandler in a “real-life” version of Space Invaders should be fun. But Pixels is so bad in its unfunny excess you might feel compelled to firebomb your local retro bar arcade in an act of vengeance.

That’s My Boy begins with statutory rape and ends in incest. Even for Adam Sandler, That’s My Boy is far too filthy and unfunny to put up with. It’s also maddening, given how it squanders a dynamite pairing of Sandler and Andy Samberg. That’s My Boy sees Adam Sandler play the deadbeat dad to his estranged son (Samberg) – born of a highly-publicized teacher-student affair – who crashes his son’s wedding to stage a lucrative TV reunion. It might look like another run-of-the-mill Sandler joint, but its over-extended reach for shock humor make it a distasteful wolf in sheep’s clothing.

You have to give The Sandman credit: He’s treated his lucrative Netflix deal for the blank check it is, taking the tech giant’s money to kick it in Puerto Rico. Sandler co-stars in The Do-Over with David Spade, who plays a hapless man in a loveless marriage who gets the chance to start life anew after running into his old classmate (Sandler) at a high school reunion. The bullets start flying when they find out the dead men whose identities they’ve stolen were caught up in shady stuff. A deflating action-comedy, The Do-Over is ironically-titled; Do-over? Don’t even bother.

Grown Ups is a better movie than its sequel, but that’s like saying a colonoscopy is better than rectal cleaning. In the first of the two films, Sandler and his other seasoned Hollywood comics spend 90 minutes making poo jokes in a pathetic comedy that deals with the difficulties of aging with dignity. Sandler unites with Chris Rock, Kevin James, David Spade, and Rob Schneider as childhood buddies who meet up years later with their families in an attempt to recapture their youthful vigor. Grown Ups is like watching a 40-something year old at the bar telling obnoxious jokes – and it’s just as unfun as it sounds.

After years of churning out lewd and crude product, Adam Sandler took a surprising turn with 2014's The Cobbler, a little piece of magical realism. Sandler is in a whole different gear, playing a humble shoe repairman with the power to become his own customers. Despite welcome sincerity and Sandler demonstrating more dramatic heft than normal – though Sandler gets assist from other actors playing his metamorphing shoemaker – The Cobbler is too riddled with scuffmarks in spite of its own good intentions.

Because a questionable amount of people watched Murder Mystery in 2019, Netflix punished its own customers with a direct sequel, Murder Mystery 2 in 2023. Following up on its predecessor, Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston return as the Spitzes, who are now struggling to keep their private detective agency afloat. Their latest case: finding the Maharajah, who has just been kidnapped at his own wedding. Anniston and Sandler are clearly having fun, it’s just a bummer how no one else is.

It’s strange to realize how Adam Sandler came to prominence in the waning years of the buddy action movie boom, yet never made any meaningful strides in the genre. Among the only few buddy movies Sandler ever made was 1996's Bulletproof, where Sandler stars as a two-bit criminal who reunites with an estranged friend (Damon Wayans) who is actually an undercover cop. Few people remember Bulletproof and for good reason: It’s boring. Uninspired and plodding, Sandler and Wayans’ lethargic chemistry – or lack thereof – leaves Bulletproof anything but.

Overstimulating to the point of inducing anaphylactic shock, Hotel Transylvania 3 slightly flips the script from the 2012 original. This time, Adam Sandler’s Dracula takes his monstrous family and friends on a crusie liner vacation, where he falls for Kathryn Hahn’s Ericka, later to be revealed as the great granddaughter of his nemesis Abraham Van Helsing. Even the movie’s target audience of kids might find Hotel Transylvania 3 extra, and even harmless fun can leave them winded.

A whodunnit as plain as its title, Murder Mystery lacks the swagger and sex appeal inherent to the genre – and that’s kind of the point. Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston reunite from Just Go With It to play an ordinary married couple who, after being invited to come aboard a billionaire’s yacht party, must now prove their innocence after their affluent host (Terence Stamp) is murdered. Though Anniston and Sandler get moderate mileage out of their fish-out-of-water roles, Murder Mystery is glossy plastic, yet another streaming thing to be watched passively on your phone.

Sandy Wexler flirts with brilliance in how it drops Adam Sandler in ‘90s Hollywood to play a talent agent remembered for his eccentricities. But what could have been a self-reflective meditation on Sandler’s own unlikely success as a movie star is instead an unambitious, overly-sentimental rom-com where Sandler falls in love with Jennifer Hudson, a singer whom Sandler’s Sandy discovers at an amusement park. About the only memorable thing about Sandy Wexler is Sandler’s execution of the role. And even then, his oversized glasses, seal-like applauses, and pastel jackets are hardly a new shade.

After committing the artistic violation that was Grown Ups 2, Chris Rock and Adam Sandler tried to make amends in 2018 with the more sober Netflix comedy The Week Of. The two play the fathers of an engaged couple who work to put aside their differences during the most important and increasingly calamitous week of their childrens’ lives. The Week Of is light on Sandler’s signature gross-outs, but it’s not enough to keep it afloat either.

Back when gay marriage was a hot-button issue, Adam Sandler and Kevin James starred in the abundantly offensive, yet surprisingly sincere I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. Sandler and James co-star as best friends and New York City firefighters who get legally married to receive benefits; when the government starts getting suspicious, the buds begin masquerading as lovebirds. Originating from a script by Alexander Payne before Sandler got involved, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry comes across as an unexpected call for social equality, albeit a careless one, from a most unexpected place: the heart.

If every major comedy star in Hollywood has to have a cartoon franchise, then Adam Sandler’s money maker is the Hotel Transylvania series. The first of them, released in 2012 and directed by animation auteur Genndy Tartakovsky, introduces Sandler as Count Dracula, who in addition to being the famous vampire also runs a hotel getaway for monsters. Sandler doesn’t seem to really try to be Dracula. Instead, he’s content to come off like he’s in a Halloween costume than actually portraying an eldritch creature of the night. But this, and all the other Hotel Transylania movies, are innocent fluff that ultimately serve to distract rugrats for the afternoon.

Adam Sandler returns as Dracula in Hotel Transylvania 2, with the comic star afforded marginally more room to play around as a doting grandfather than the more conventional protective father he was in the predecessor. Still, Hotel Transylvania 2 simply keeps the ball rolling, existing as little more than a paycheck for everyone involved. But Sandler has done far worse than voice a funny Dracula, and Hotel Transylvania 2 is as sweet as a handful of Halloween candy.

In 2014, Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore nearly matched Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan to deliver a third in a trio of perfect romantic comedies. Sadly, their efforts fell way short with the flavorless Blended. Sandler and Barrymore co-star as single parents whose disastrous blind date is followed up by a coincidental shared family vacation in South Africa. There’s some sweetness in all its schmaltz, but Blended is nowhere near to the level of what Sandler/Barrymore have delivered before.

Adam Sandler in a squeaky-clean Disney movie sounds like magic on paper, but Bedtime Stories is nothing revelatory for the normally crude superstar. Sandler stars as a hotel maintenance man whose bedtime stories to his niece and nephew impausibly become true in reality. But while Sandler starts weaving tall tales of heroism and riches, the oblivious kids offer up some wacky twists of their own. By virtue of its Disney overlords, Bedtime Stories is sanitized Sandler romp the whole family can enjoy, but it’s not anyone’s idea of a dream come true.

It’s something of a master stroke on Adam Sandler’s part that he convinces everyone that Jennifer Anniston is the “other” woman in his 2011 rom-com Just Go With It. The Sandman stars as a womanizing plastic surgeon who compels his office manager (Anniston) to parade around as his divorcing wife after he meets someone he believes is his true love (Brooklyn Decker). But naturally, what Sandler is looking for may have been in front of him all this time. Just Go With It doesn’t tread new ground, and you can guess every turn it takes, but it’s a carefree ride.

A lesser remake to an already middling 1936 Frank Capra movie, Mr. Deeds sees Adam Sandler as a small-town pizzeria owner who inherits a massive $40 billion fortune, only to find priceless love from a tabloid TV journalist (played by Winona Ryder). Tamer than most Sandler fare but not as memorable either, Mr. Deeds gets most of its worth from Sandler inhabiting a uniquely wholesome, gee-shucks energy that’s in stark contrast to his other screaming buffoons.

If you were the right age to catch The Waterboy on cable, chances are bits like “Water sucks, Gatorade is better” are ingrained somewhere in your memory. Otherwise, The Waterboy is typical Adam Sandler slop, a raunchy underdog comedy that obscures its good nature in juvenile idiocy. Sandler stars as a bullied 32-year-old manchild whose new job providing water for a losing Louisiana college football team unlocks the violent superstar within him. Endlessly quotable but not much else, The Waterboy quenches anyone’s thirst for something stupid.

As Adam Sandler once sang himself: Christmas is one day, but Hanukkah is eight crazy nights. In this unusual R-rated animated musical, Adam Sandler lends his voice and likeness to become Davey Stone, a 30-something alcoholic who is given one last shot to turn his life around or else spend ten years in prison. Despite clever apperancess and catchy tunes, Eight Crazy Nights doesn’t totally seize on its potential to be a true holiday classic. But if claymation Santas and reindeer feel played out, you can light a candle with a mischievous 2D Sandler.

Adam Sandler is known for playing out-of-shape schlubs and very average joes, but for once, he was an all-star MVP in The Longest Yard. A remake of the hard-hitting Burt Reynolds movie from 1974, The Longest Yard follows Sandler as Paul Crewe, a disgraced NFL star who forms a team of inmates to play against their abusive guards. (Burt Reynolds also co-stars in the remake, this time playing the team’s coach.) While this ‘05 remake goes for more laughs than its grittier predecessor, it’s still a down-and-dirty football flick teeming with testosterone.

When Adam Sandler failed to get an Oscar for his work in the acclaimed Uncut Gems, he threatened to make a movie that was quote, “so bad on purpose” as an act of revenge. When Sandler went home with no trophies, that’s when Hubie Halloween hit Netflix. But as a surprise, this pumpkin spiced romp is anything but tricks. Sandler plays innocent, Halloween-obsessed deli worker Hubie Dubois who takes it upon himself to save his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts when a kidnapper threatens to ruin the spookiest night of the year. It’s a bizarre follow-up to Uncut Gems, sure, but this sugary sweet Halloween flick is a good time for everyone, even those too young to remember when Sandler wasn’t a Netflix fixture.

Before the Bill Lawrence show Shrinking saw Jason Segel play a therapist who invites a patient to live with him, there was the comparatively more reckless Anger Management. A timid businessman (Adam Sandler) has one bad experience on an airplane that leads to court-mandated therapy with a specialist (Jack Nicholson), whose unorthodox treatments escalate to extreme degrees. Though Nicholson pushes Sandler’s buttons, it just might be the thing he needs to finally stand up for himself. Anger Management is no comedy classic, but Nicholson proves he’s a hall of fame-worthy meme machine, eclipsing a surprisingly subdued Sandler.

Chad Kultgen’s novel about suburban families wallowing in self-made prisons of sex, boredom, and technology is also a sedated, if sleepy dramedy by Juno and Up in the Air director Jason Reitman. Adam Sandler is one of several familiar faces in the movie; he plays Don Truby, the dissatisfied husband to Helen (Rosemarie DeWitt) and de facto main character of Kultgen’s book. While Men, Women & Children underwhelms like an extramarital fling at a Marriott, its defiance of what a “sex movie starring Adam Sandler” should be might pique interest.

During a brief spell when Adam Sandler and pal Rob Schneider were the default stars of lowbrow, high-concept comedies, Sandler took folks by surprise with his emotionally affecting Click. Sandler takes charge as a workaholic family man who is given a magical remote that gives him control over time. But as he fast forwards through the “boring” parts of life, he comes to realize what he’s missing out. Though the movie’s premise is built on a corny Bed, Bath & Beyond gag, Click is disarmingly powerful in its overly familiar but no less resonant message of taking time to pause and bask in the wonderful life you already lead.

With stone cold classics like Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good as It Gets under his belt, director James L. Brooks disappointed many with his 2004 romantic dramedy Spanglish. But in hindsight, it’s now one of the better turnouts for star Adam Sandler, playing a Los Angeles chef who hires a Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrant (Paz Vega) as a live-in housekeeper. As cultural differences and language barriers create tension, their crowded house becomes a home through shared understanding. Spanglish was not the first mature film to star Sandler – Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love was released just two years prior – but its appeal to actual grownups proved Sandler had, and has, more to offer.

Clunky inclusion of 9/11 aside, Adam Sandler is in exceptionally rare form as troubled Charlie, a lonely man mourning the loss of his family. After running into an old college roommate (Don Cheadle), who is split between his family and his career, the two rekindle their friendship, finding in each other what they need to carry on and move ahead. With a mop of frumpled hair and oversized earphones as a security blanket, Sandler impresses in one of his most vulnerable roles to date. You should also see him play the heck out of Shadow of the Colossus.

In a different time, Spaceman would be a different movie. If it were twenty years ago, Adam Sandler floating around in a spacesuit and befriending a talking spider who gives him advice about his marriage would be a recipe for something nonsensical. (As if it isn’t already.) But in the streaming era, Spaceman is played straight, maintaining its dignity as an existential sci-fi drama that interrogates the pangs of loneliness. Not all of Spaceman feels like it has footing on solid ground, but its somber tone compliments a committed Sandler who appears in uncharacteristically tortured hues.

Vomiting walruses and ethically troubling behavior by everyone are not enough to sink the buoyant 50 First Dates. Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore reunite from The Wedding Singer to play a romantic match made in Hawaiian paradise whose only problem is Barrymore’s condition of short-term memory loss. Though Sandler relishes in the comfort of his usually bawdy humor, 50 First Dates has a heart of gold that is easy to fall for. If you’re the sentimental type, the ending will sweep you off your feet.

Not long after Happy Gilmore made him a household name, Adam Sandler offered a glimpse at his coming maturity with a movie explicitly about his unwillingness to grow up and take responsibility. In Big Daddy, Sandler’s leading loaf Sonny illegally adopts his roommate’s kid (Cole and Dylan Sprouse in their first major role) in a desperate play to win back his ex-girlfriend. But raising a child is both rewarding and far more than Sonny bargained for, his fight to maintain custody culminating in a disarmingly sweet climax at a courthouse. Poke holes at the plot all you want – it can’t stop Big Daddy from being one of Sandler’s better movies, equally crass and charming in all the best ways.

Audiences went into Funny People expecting one thing, only to come out the other end with something totally different. Helmed by Judd Apatow during his hot streak, Adam Sandler plays a terminally ill comedian and movie star who befriends an up-and-comer (Rogen) and hires him as an assistant. Despite its title and marquee stars, Funny People isn’t a laugh-a-minute riot (which certainly many thought it would be). Instead, it’s an anxious dramedy about mortality and artistic expression. Sandler is a particular standout, practically playing himself but in a way that opens him like a bleeding wound.

When Billy Madison hit theaters, critics dismissed it as low-rent comedy for the MTV-pilled. But audiences rallied around it, cementing it as a classic that created a star out of Adam Sandler, who plays the dimwitted, spoiled son of a CEO who must repeat his entire schooling to win control of his father’s company. This has effectively been the story of Sandler’s whole career: His is the face of critically unpopular comedies that earn repeat viewings and loyalty from “normal” people. Whether or not Billy Madison is actually good – it’s pretty good, really!– its true importance lies in setting up Sandler’s ball before he spiked it one year later.

Only The Sandman in a Bruins jersey could turn the ninth hole into a house party. Adam Sandler’s star-making Happy Gilmore sees the actor as a would-be hockey phenom whose vicious slap shot makes him a natural for golf, but his presence in the sport draws the ire of buttoned-up pros. Happy Gilmore is an instance of material and talent synthesising in a way that feels like fate as Sandler’s abrasive dude persona make him the perfect underdog antihero over manicured turf. Between Carl Weathers as his mentor and Bob Barker as his sworn enemy, Sandler’s undisputed classic brought new meaning to fore-play.

If Adam Sandler has one perfect romantic comedy, it’s easily The Wedding Singer. With microphone gripped in his fist, Sandler flip-flops between charismatic cat and pathetic crooner in this delightful ‘80s nostalgia period piece, in which Sandler’s mulleted romantic lead is a heartbroken wedding (and later, bar mitzvah) singer who is left at the altar. That’s when Drew Barrymore shows up as a client, inspiring Sandler to steal her away from her unfaithful fiance before her big day. A Mousse’d up Sandler is a pure charmer, even when he’s ruining some other poor bride’s festivities with his depressing soliloquies.

It’s a family affair for the Sandlers in You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, a late-stage Sandler joint that is implausibly one of his best-ever In this electric coming-of-age comedy for Netflix, Adam Sandler plays a supporting role as Danny Friedman, patriarch of the Friedmans whose youngest daughter Stacy (Sunny Sandler) is gearing up for her monumental day. Naturally, the movie’s main focus is on the comically petty drama between its youthful characters. But Papa Sandler is just being a good dad in letting his kids relish the spotlight.

Though he plays a fast food-gorging NBA scout, Adam Sandler is locked in as Stanley Sugerman, whose future in professional basketball rests on an unproven dark horse from the streets of Spain, Bo Cruz (Juancho Hernangómez, who in real life played for teams like the Denver Nuggets, Boston Celtics, and Toronto Raptors). Tapping into the same well of risk-it-all agents of chaos that made his role in Uncut Gems acclaimed, Sandler puts on a measured performance that reveals how much you can still win even from the bench.

Noah Baumbach’s smart, punchy family drama The Meyerowitz Stories chronicles the lives of adult siblings who suffer under the shadow of their moderately successful artist father (Dustin Hoffman). Adam Sandler is the eldest and the resident loose cannon, Danny Meyerowitz, whose labored gait and nervous energy puts him in contrast with his waifish hippie sister (Emma Thompson) and self-made financier Matthew (Ben Stiller). Sandler is in fine shape in Baumbach’s picture, his workwear wardrobe emphasizing his rough edges.

When it seemed like Adam Sandler was a one-note performer, director Paul Thomas Anderson proved otherwise with his acclaimed surrealist picture Punch-Drunk Love. Sandler takes charge as socially inept, often shy business owner Barry Egan, who is eternally drowned out by the overbearing presence of his many sisters. Barry’s life changes when he falls for one of his sister’s coworkers (Emily Watson) and becomes the victim to an extorting phone sex operator. For the first time in his career, Sandler drops the loud voices and manbaby screaming and reveals an infinitely more thoughtful and careful side to his artistry, anchoring a film that revels in the expanse of one’s loneliness.

The term “white-knuckle thriller” was made for movies like Uncut Gems. After years of flailing around in mediocre studio comedies, Adam Sandler went to the dark side in his role as Howard Ratner, a Diamond District player whose toxic gambling addiction escalates into violence. The Safdie Brothers give Sandler carte blanche to run wild as a bespectacled agent of chaos, whose ring-studded fingers and obnoxious gold Rolexes can’t shield him from others’ aggressions. Whether or not Uncut Gems is actually Adam Sandler’s best movie, it’s without question one of his best performances, forcing us to acknowledge that Hollywood’s biggest clown is in his own ways a king.