They're All Gonna Laugh at You!

Album Review

In his incredibly successful run of films, Adam Sandler's constant has been his penchant for playing the jokey everyman. From Happy Gilmore to Mr. Deeds, he's the likeable lout with a heart of gold and a love of guy stuff like hockey, farts, and McDonald's breakfasts. His perpetual hangdog look and Jewish-joke songs have carried him a long way since 1993, when the Saturday Night Live alum issued They're All Gonna Laugh at You, his first -comedy album. The humor was of the class-clown school: crass, obvious, and self-absorbed. But its bits formed the foundation of Sandler's charmingly foul comic empire. Instead of its stated purpose as a concept album based loosely on high school, Laugh functions more as a kiss-off to Sandler's own adolescence. "Who's laughing now?" he seems to be asking. Of course, that's only in its subtext. On the surface, the album is dominated by classless sex jokes and weak ideas that linger like too-long SNL sketches. (The self-explanatory "Longest Pee" is interminable). But in the obtuse exhortations of The Buffoon, or his lovingly wicked tribute to the lunch lady, Sandler established jokes a generation of college students could repeat for hours and would pay to see at sold-out shows. Like all of his impersonations, The Buffoon is simply Sandler, amplified and goofy. "I got a snake, man! One time I gave it some beer! It was slithering this way and that! It was all f*cked up!" It's a joke reduced to its blatant catchphrase. Of course, the same technique falls on its face when applied to "Beating of a High School Bus Driver" and its lame cousins. But as sexual humor, it again becomes stupid fun. In "At a Medium Pace" and "Assistant Principal's Big Day," Sandler becomes the kid on the playground whose brother taught him all the bad words; amazingly, it's still cringingly funny, if only because he's obviously enjoying being so bad. In telling fashion, They're All Gonna Laugh at You ends with The Buffoon getting the girl (actually just pal David Spade). Sandler's album made hit comedy from his childhood terrors and he laughed all the way to the bank.