Adam Sandler brings it all together here: hot-for-teacher romance, ’80s nostalgia, horny grandmas, random celebrity cameos and attempts at racial humour that fall somewhere between offensive and a parody of offence. Which, depending on your point of view, makes this either the ne plus ultra of Hollywood calculation or a comedy intent on pushing its crassness to the point of surrealism.
It begins with the teenage version of Sandler’s character, Donny Berger, being seduced by his maths teacher. After the affair is exposed Donny is thrust into celebrity with his own book (‘Head in the Class’) and a TV movie. Decades later, he’s enticed into a TV reunion with the estranged product of his outrageously inappropriate union – a hedge-fund manager (Andy Samberg) who’s changed his name to Todd Peterson (birth name: Han Solo Berger). Unkempt, dick-fixated Donny acts as this metrosexual banker’s raging id. The movie never quite cashes the cheque on that satirical angle. But the basic joke keeps on giving and the sweetness of the parent-child bonding scenes plays well.