It's not his genre. Having reached serious career heights as a popular comedian, Adam Sandler believed that his reputation and fame should serve as the basis for creating his own production company, which would obey his will and make only films approved by his supervisor and his creative flair. And since the films with Sandler invariably collected good money at the box office, major Hollywood studios happily cooperated with the comedian’s company, providing him with proposals for shooting with large fees. Year after year, Adam Sandler received tens of millions of dollars for his work, while paying absolutely no attention to critics, who increasingly treated his work with a sense of disappointment. The main thing in this situation was that the audience did not mind watching Sandler and his loyal comrades in arms like Rob Schneider or Kevin James along with him on the screen, which means that Happy Madison could safely continue its activities without much worry about what the press will say about it. And finally, Sandler’s influence on the comedy genre became so great that he began to produce solo films of his second-rate colleagues, who without their boss had almost no chance of starring in a feature film. One such project was Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, a comedy with a typical artistic style from Adam Sandler, but with Nick Swardson in leading positions.
Directly the plot of the film introduces us to Bucky Larson (Swardson), far from the most cute and intelligent guy who lives somewhere in provincial Iowa. Bucky has almost no chance to meet a pretty girl, everyone in the district considers him somewhat strange, and two front, too large teeth, complement the already frankly sad picture, which makes the guy actually an outcast. However, Bucky’s fate presents a very unexpected surprise, as it turns out that a few decades ago his parents were real celebrities. Only their fame had one characteristic nuance. Mr. and Mrs. Larson starred in adult films, and now it is not very common to talk about it out loud. But fame is fame, it can be any and at the same time bring its owners significant dividends, which means that Bucky himself decided that with such a chic pedigree he should go straight to Hollywood and follow in the footsteps of star parents. When the hero finally arrived in the capital of the world of filmmaking, it is logically faced with problems that in addition to him have thousands of ambitious guys storming Hollywood. However, Bucky with his strange appearance must multiply everything at least twice, because his patrimony he chose no more suitable comedy, and porn, where the guys are already much more difficult to move forward than the girls. And yet Bucky does not give up, he believes that the genes gave him charisma and charm, and then he begins to be interested in a pretty waitress Katie McGee (Christina Ricci), with whom it is possible to start a romantic relationship.
In the work on “Bucky Larson” Adam Sandler took a direct part, acting not only as a producer, but also working on the script. And it must be admitted that written on paper really had prospects, since the story of a loser who went to the casting in adult films in itself causes increased attention, and nevertheless, unlike even the most successful films with the participation of Sandler, “Born to become a star” looks inept, stupid and not always funny crafts that are easy to forget immediately after watching. The filmmakers tried to sketch out as many doubtful moments as possible in the frame, while playing on frankly disgusting jokes and vulgarity, which, of course, in the plot based on porn, simply had to be, but no sense of moderation and charm should not be expected here. Director Tom Brady seemed to set himself the task to shoot the most defiant, detached from reality spectacle, and although some scenes were very funny, in general, it is difficult to mistake Bucky Larson for something resourceful or at least digestible. By all parameters, this story refers to the second, or even the third tier of Adam Sandler comedies and it is not surprising that “Born to be a star” failed at the box office, along the way collecting a whole bouquet of nominations for the anti-award “Golden Raspberry”. And in this case, "Bucky Larson" was supposed to be the absolute winner, but the organizers decided that "Such different twins" with the same Sandler much more worthy of dubious figurines.
Could not attract the attention of Nick Swardson, whom Sandler finally allowed to prove himself and put him in charge of the film. Swardson himself is very good in supporting roles, he amused us well in Don’t Joke with Zohan and Pretend to be my wife, but he was not able to pull a full-fledged film on his shoulders. The main character, that is, Bucky Larson, in places too much, he speculates on the same jokes, and the director does not cease to demonstrate his frankly terrible jokes and habits that do not fit in with the behavior of even a relatively normal person. Of course, after his previous roles, no one really expected Nick Swardson to make much sense, and nevertheless, the work on the image would have been worth doing more carefully so that the film could at least recoup its very small production budget and bring profit to the creators. However, in the case of Bucky Larson, this did not happen and Adam Sandler’s company had to suffer a natural loss. And only the participation of Christina Ricci and Stephen Dorff was able to partially atone for all the mistakes that the creators made. Of course, this is not the strongest consolation, and nevertheless it is already good that people appeared on the set who tried to do their work at a high professional level. First of all, it concerns Ricci, although Dorf was not superfluous here.
“Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star” was one of the most failed projects of Adam Sandler’s company. In addition, the comedian himself proved not to be the best way when he did not really control the shooting process and let ruin his own script. Maybe the basis of the film and was far from ideal, and yet everything could be realized on film properly, which was not done, and the choice of Nick Swardson for the lead role, unfortunately, did not justify. So the comedy came out frankly unsatisfactory, and it certainly can not bring to the asset none of those involved in the shooting.
3 out of 10