3rd Grader: Hey look everybody, Billy peed his pants.
Billy Madison: Of course I peed my pants, everyone my age pees their pants. It’s the coolest.
3rd Grader: Really?
Billy Madison: YES! You ain’t cool, unless you pee your pants.
3rd Grader: Hey look, Ernie peed his pants too. Alright!
Old Farm Lady: If peeing in your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis.
Billy Madison: OOH! That was the grossest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Let’s go.

If in fact Billy Madison was correct by saying that urinating in your britches is cool, then the actor that portrayed him, Adam Sandler, has not wet himself in a very, very long time.

Adam Sandler is not cool.

Here are the titles of the films Adam Sandler has released since one was considered “Fresh” (60% rating or higher) by Rotten Tomatoes:

Just Go with It

Jack and Jill

Zookeeper

Grownups

The one before those that was considered “Fresh” was Funny People (68%), in case you were wondering.

But let’s go back and look at those four films I just mentioned for a second. Have you seen any of them? Did you want to see any of them? Did you know anybody that wanted to see any of them? If you answered yes to any of those questions, I am sorry, but you are a moron.

“But Jennifer Aniston and Brooklyn Decker were in one of them,” you say?

Don’t care.

Those are four of the worst movies released over the past several years and he was the star of each of them. And what’s worse? They all made a lot of money.

So what happened to Adam Sandler? What went wrong with the guy that made us laugh in Saturday Night Live, Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, and The Wedding Singer?

I’ll tell you what went wrong. He just can’t let go. He turned into Hollywood’s Brett Favre.

If he had followed a career more closely aligned with, let’s say, Will Smith, he probably would not have turned into the guy that makes everyone cringe when they see a preview for one of his upcoming features.

Will Smith has starred in four movies since 2007 (not counting 2008’s In the Loop). In that same amount of time, Adam Sandler has starred in NINE movies.

The average score according to Rotten Tomatoes for Smith (assuming a 65 for the upcoming MIB3 (the average of MIB and MIBII))? 50.

The average score for Sandler’s nine movies? 28.

That’s pretty decent for Big Willie Style given that the abysmal Seven Pounds and relatively below par Hancock are included.  But for Sandler that is awful. An average Rotten Tomatoes score of 28% pretty much means any critic that saw those movies, which in a star like Sandler’s case would be most every critic worth a damn, thought the movies were, for lack of better terms, horse crap.

So why is Sandler making such terrible products? Why doesn’t he keep the audience wanting more by making a quality flick every now and then like Smith does instead of making two to three terrible movies per year? I honestly think it’s because he would not know what to do with himself if he weren’t making movies. This guy started acting before he was 21. He became a star on Saturday Night Live at 25 and was in his first successful movie (Coneheads) at 27. Acting is really all he has ever known given that he hasn’t gone a year without making any type of movie since 2001.

Obviously people wouldn’t feel that Adam Sandler was so terrible if he were making decent movies, but they are all just so bad. In his 20+ year career, he has made five “Fresh” movies, and those were all arguably his least commercially successful. He has made well over 30 movies all total and they have literally made billions of dollars, but is it really worth it to him to make boatloads of cash while sacrificing his integrity and looking like a money hungry ass? I understand that not being “Fresh” doesn’t necessarily mean a movie is bad, and Sandler has had several “Rotten” ones that are still great, but very few like that have been released since the early 2000s.

I am pretty sure Adam Sandler is a smart, well-read guy. And I’m pretty sure when he reads these scripts he is capable of knowing right away that they would all make lousy movies. But he makes the movies anyway. He gives the proverbial middle finger to creativity and class and says, “Bring on the garbage and let me wallow in it.” If that makes him happy, fine. If he is in it for the money, and there is a lot of it to be had, great. But if he wants to be remembered as someone who made Hollywood better, someone who put out films that people will always treasure, then he is failing miserably.

I remember seeing Billy Madison for the first time and being blown away. It was ridiculously funny and got horrible reviews, but people still loved it and will continue watching it for years to come. Same goes for a good number of his other works. But I bet there were a lot of you that read the titles of those first four movies I mentioned and couldn’t tell me the plot of any of them. If it has been a year or two since those films came out and hardly anyone knows what they were about, that says a lot about where Adam Sandler’s career has gone.

And quite frankly, with That’s My Boy and Grown Ups 2 both coming out within the next year, the future doesn’t look too bright.

But before you write Sandler off completely, take eight minutes and enjoy a classic moment from his glory days.