冒牌老爸 Big Daddy review by JEFF MILLAR

What is Adam Sandler up to?

The living god of the 22-year-old, backward-ballcap male demographic has made several comedies that were substantially smarter than you'd expect.

But if you think about it, Sandler and collaborator Tim Herlihy have been writing a series of genre parodies.

Yes, what gets the audiences in the doors for an Adam Sandler movie is humor of studied crudity; but some of the cultural references for the parody go back as far as the '30s: Billy Madigan was a Depression-era high-concept picture; The Waterboy was a spoof of Big Game movies.

Big Daddy, the team's new film, recalls the massive tearjerkers The Champ, Little Miss Marker or The Kid. In those sentimental films, adults who are far from the nurturing type are turned into jelly by a big-eyed child.

This is Sandler's closest yet to playing it straight. The sentiment is not spoofed. When the social worker inevitably comes to take the kid away and our guy says, "I love that kid," nobody's expecting anybody to snort.

Sonny (Sandler) is an amiable lout, just as you'd expect, in the running for Slacker of the Century.

He's a Syracuse law school graduate who has yet to take the bar exam because he has so much not to do: New York Rangers games, New York Jets games, sleeping, going to Central Park and waiting for rollerbladers to take nasty falls.

He's an egregious waste of space, which his girlfriend (Kristy Swanson) finally recognizes. She announces that she's leaving him.

Delivered to his apartment is Julian (played by identical 6-year-old twins Cole and Dylan Sprouse), whom Sonny is supposed to deliver in turn to his best friend Kevin (Jon Stewart). Kevin, off in China on business, does not know that he fathered the boy. But Julian's mother has sent him to live with his father.

Figuring that if he "does something big," the girlfriend will "respect that," Sonny tells New York City social services that he is the boy's natural father.

Girlfriend is not impressed.

Sonny goes to turn in Julian at social services. But when he hears that the kid will be placed in an orphanage ("We call them `group homes' now," says the social worker, "but they're orphanages.") ...

Sonny has not the slightest knowledge of children, nor enough responsibility to keep a cactus alive.

"Give kids options instead of orders" is the parenting theory Sonny devises for Julian. He lets the boy choose a new name for himself (Frankenstein), dress himself and not bathe if that's what he wants to do.

When the kid wants a nightlight, Sonny gives the boy his favorite neon sign, the one reading "Live Nudes."

Sonny is aware of the value of an appealing child as babe bait. He successfully gets a nibble from Layla (Joey Lauren Adams). She'll come in handy when the social worker comes to repo Julian.

Director Dennis Dugan has a nice courtroom scene, a skillful mix of naked sentiment and Marx Brothers humor. There may be a parodistic snort or two in the all-purpose ending, which provides mass quantities of happiness for all.

Sandler's comedies lay more complex humor beneath the gross jokes. In Big Daddy, the comedy flirts with something that looks actually -- yipes -- serious.

Although it's played for laughs, Sonny has a painful relationship with his own father, distant except to give orders. To watch this massively self-absorbed guy become seduced by one of the young of our species, and through that, try to undo the wrong done to him, is quite sweet.

Funny-sweet, understand, not bleccchh sweet. This may be the first of Sandler's films in which women might also appreciate the humor. But Sandler's core demographic -- guys -- need not fear betrayal or abandonment.

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