June 15, 2012

If You Care About Yourself, You Won’t See This Movie

Ugh.Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures

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That’s My Boy
Columbia Pictures
114 minutes

The new Adam Sandler flick That’s My Boy is one of the most oppressively unfunny films ever produced, reaching levels of jaw-dropping unwatchability that rival 2002’s The Sweetest Thing.

I could detail for you the dumb, gossamer storyline, but what would be the point? That’s My Boy stars Adam Sandler (remember when he was in Punch-Drunk Love?), playing a hybrid of Dickie Roberts and a bad Good Will Hunting parody. Andy Samberg co-stars, presumably trying to win a bet he drunkenly made with friends who thought he couldn’t make a movie worse than Hot Rod. James Caan and Susan Sarandon are also in the movie, for god knows what reasons. What follows is a long slog of vulgarity-to-nowhere. There is not one boob joke, fart joke, hard-on joke, masturbation joke, trailer-trash joke, pube joke, bunghole joke, cunnilingus joke, sex-with-your-mom joke, vomit joke, incest joke, or obesity joke in this that isn’t unpardonably stale.

To add shotgun-to-the-kneecap to injury, Vanilla Ice (Vanilla Ice) plays himself.

If you care about yourself, you will not see this movie ever. It is tailor-made to be consumed by the kind of grown men who will only eat chicken nuggets if they’re shaped like dinosaurs, and there are times when the film honestly feels like physical torture.

Here’s a redband TV spot for the damn thing:

That’s My Boy gets a wide release on Friday, June 15. The film is rated R for crude sexual content throughout, nudity, pervasive language and some drug use. Click here if you hate yourself and want to get local showtimes and tickets.

Click here for more movie and TV features from Mother Jones. To read more of Asawin’s reviews, click here.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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