Billy Madison Blu-ray Review
Man-child in the land of comic premise
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, May 26, 2011
Critics often dismiss Adam Sandler as a one-note comic who constantly returns to the same
character: a child trapped in a man's body, given to fits of temper and wildly inappropriate
behavior. But many enduring comic careers have been founded on some sort of archetype,
whether it's Rodney Dangerfield's "no respect" or Don Rickle's abrasive king of insults. The
longevity of Sandler's career is impressive by any standard, but it's even more so when compared
to the many failures and flameouts of other
Saturday Night Live alums. Only Will Farrell, Eddie
Murphy and Chevy Chase have managed to keep going for so long (and the latter two have spent
much time in "whatever happened to
him?" limbo).
Billy Madison was Sandler's first feature film as writer and leading man. While no great shakes at the box office in 1995, it
has remained a perennial on video, with multiple DVD releases, an HD DVD in 2007, and now a
Blu-ray. I'm not enough of a Sandler fan to proclaim the film a guilty pleasure, but it has
amusing moments, and you can see Sandler hard at work assembling elements from various
SNL
characters in ways that would ultimately pay off in later hits like
The Wedding Singer,
Big Daddy
and
Anger Management. Sandler may appear to
be casually tossing off his routines, but show
business endurance like his doesn't happen unless you work at it. And there always has to be a
first movie.
Billy Madison takes place in an alternate reality that might as well be a fairy tale. Billy (Sandler)
is the only son of a hotel magnate, Brian Madison (Darren McGavin, perfectly deadpan). He lives
an idle and pampered life, drinking, soaking up rays and playing pranks with his friends, Jack
(Mark Beltzman) and Frank (fellow
SNL alum Norm MacDonald). Madison Sr. wants to retire
and hand over the company to Billy, but since the son hasn't even attained the emotional maturity
of Arthur Bach, that just isn't possible. There are references to a mother who helped build the
hotel empire, but she's no longer in the picture and seems to have left no impression (a common
phenomenon in Sandler's films). The most influential woman in Billy's life is the randy
housekeeper, Juanita (Theresa Merritt, impressively balancing right at the edge of facetious).
The plot, such as it is, is set in motion by Madison Sr.'s two lieutenants, one good, the other bad.
The good one, Carl, is played by lanky character actor Larry Hankin, and he wants Billy to grow
up and take his father's place. The bad one, Eric, is played by Bradley Whitford, in the days
when he was still primarily a comic actor before
The West Wing gave him the illusion of gravitas,
and he chomps with gusto into the role of a schoolyard bully in a business suit. Indeed, one of
Eric's more subversive functions in
Billy Madison is to suggest that Billy might actually be
qualified to run the company, because business is just a slightly more gentrified variant of boys
being boys.
After discovering that his father paid off every single teacher to pass him from kindergarten
onwards, Billy offers to repeat K through 12 on his own, two weeks for each grade. If he passes,
the company is his. This ludicrous setup allows Sandler free reign to behave childishly, but it
also lets him perform lengthy scenes with children, something for which he has a gift and to
which he's returned repeatedly in subsequent films. Many of
Billy Madison's best scenes involve
Sandler interacting with kids and eliciting their natural reactions.
Of course there's a girl. Of course she's beautiful. And of course she disapproves of Billy but is
quickly won over by his "heart" and boyish charm. Sandler's films are filled with such idealized
kewpie dolls, and it wasn't until
Funny People (which
he didn't write) that Sandler let himself
explore the darker underside of that fantasy. The girl in
Billy Madison is Veronica Vaughn, the
third grade teacher (Bridgette Wilson from
Last Action
Hero and
I Know What You Did
Last
Summer), and she's one of the tougher babes in the Sandler canon, possibly because
Billy
Madison is the rare Sandler film directed by a woman (Tamra Davis). I doubt that a male director
would have staged the scene where Veronica beats the crap out of Billy with such obvious
enthusiasm.
Billy's progression through school involves little more than a series of sketches with a smattering
of plot. Some are amusing, and some fall flat. (A lot depends on personal taste; the bits with the
late Chris Farley's bus driver might work for someone else, but they don't for me, because I
could never warm to Farley.) As Billy's success begins to appear likely, the dastardly Eric
schemes to undermine him. He devises an unlikely but goofy plan involving the school's
principal (the reliable Josh Mostel) and, in a plot turn that no one bothers to explain very clearly,
ends up opposing Billy in an academic "decathalon" that, in classic movie fashion, concludes
before a school assembly that seems to include grade school, high school and the executive suite
of Madison Hotels. One of the best bits in the film comes courtesy of an uncredited Steve
Buscemi as a former classmate of Billy's from high school.
Director Davis took over the film after shooting began, and she notes repeatedly in her
commentary that she didn't choose many elements of the design. But her influence can be felt in
the film's lightness of touch and in its obvious affection for Billy and his friends, even at their
most childish. After getting her start directing music videos for bands like NWA, Sonic Youth
and Tone Loc, Davis graduated to feature films with low budgets and a "youth" orientation. By
the time she came to
Billy Madison, she was married to Mike D of the Beastie Boys, and her
preceding feature was the Chris Rock vehicle
CB4. In film school, she'd befriended one of the art
world's most infamous overgrown children, Jean-Michel Basquiat, about whom she would
eventually make the superb documentary,
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. In short,
Davis had the perfect resumé for handling the boy-men of
Billy Madison's world with
appropriate sympathy but enough distance to find the comic beats in their anarchic behavior.
Davis' music background proved useful as well. Some of the film's most surprising elements
involve random eruptions of music: Billy breaking into dance moves to a song that only he hears
(along with the audience), or a full-fledged production number that falls somewhere between
Broadway and MTV. Davis stages these moments simply and without fuss, and they work
because she's not afraid of them. Too many directors would have underlined them, and they
would have fallen flat.
Billy Madison Blu-ray, Video Quality
While I don't have the HD DVD for comparison, one can reasonably assume that this is the same
hi-def transfer previously released by Universal, and it's typical of Uni's repurposed Blu-rays,
which is to say that it's serviceable but undistinguished. Black levels are adequate, and detail is
generally good, although softness is evident in the fine detail of many wide shots. Whether this is
a product of the original photography or a result of the transfer and mastering process was
impossible to tell. I did not see any telltale signs of filtering or noise reduction to suggest that
detail had been eliminated to facilitate fitting the film onto a BD-25.
Occasional shots betray the instability associated with gate weave, which is not unusual with a
film made before digital intermediates became standard. The artifact is fleeting and occasional;
most viewers probably won't notice it.
Where the Blu-ray excels is in its reproduction of the film's color palette. Davis took full
advantage of the artificiality of Billy's world so that wherever possible the frame is filled with
strong colors. At times, the cheerful brightness makes the film look like a television show (and,
indeed, DP Victor Hammer would go on to give a similar look to some interesting TV series,
including
Veronica Mars and
Wonderfalls). But the approach pays off in elaborate sequences like
the fantasy parties that Billy throws for himself every time he passes another grade, complete
with clowns, fair rides and jet skis in the Madison estate's water fountains. The Blu-ray
reproduces all these hues nicely, without oversaturation or bleeding.
Billy Madison Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
As their careers evolve, film actors often acquire a patina of identifications that changes how we
experience their earlier roles. When we watch Bogart's early gangster films, it's impossible not
to see the future Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe or
Casablanca's Rick under the hoodlum. When
Monroe appears as Miss Casswell in
All About Eve, it's hard not to hear echoes of Lorelei Lee or
How to Marry a Millionaire's Pola Debevoise. And one day, mark my words, Adam Sandler will
be an old man accepting lifetime achievement awards, and speakers will be praising his early
"breakthrough" work in
Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore
and even
Bulletproof, which by then will
be viewed through eyes conditioned by films we have yet to experience. I already know that I can
never look at these films the same way ever since Sandler chose to explore different aspects of
his trademark persona in
Punch-Drunk Love, Reign Over Me
and
Funny People.
Billy Madison
may be no more than "basic" Sandler, but basic Sandler keeps getting more interesting. Worth revisiting if you liked it the first time; worth a look if you've
liked anything Sandler's done since. Either way, the Blu-ray won't disappoint.