How Adam Sandler’s ‘Love You’ Special on Netflix Helps Continue an Unlikely Middle-Aged Peak

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Adam Sandler’s recent career reboot is that casual fans might not even realize that it’s happened. In the last five or six years, he has done goofy comedies from his Happy Madison production company, tried his hand at a few dramas, and performed stand-up. While he didn’t do much stand-up during the 2000s, he did continue making comedy albums, and while he hasn’t always had a line in serious dramas, he gave that a shot repeatedly between 2002 and 2009. So superficially speaking, not much has changed. Yet watching Love You, Sandler’s latest stand-up special for Netflix, does indicate how Sandler has continued to subtly refine and improve his persona – a particularly unusual spectacle for a comic well into middle-age.

The comedy itself is very much a follow-up to the shambolic style of 100 Percent Fresh, his previous Netflix hour: He alternates between old-fashioned story-jokes with clear, absurd punchlines – not unlikely, at times, stuff that his late buddy Norm Macdonald might have enjoyed – and ditties that turn into joke vehicles. The stories often go longer than expected, like a riff about a genie in a lamp at an airport bathroom, while the songs are often shorter and punchier.

But rather than cutting together footage from throughout a tour, something that was obvious in 100 Percent Fresh, Love You sticks to a single, smallish venue – one essentially created just for the taping, with director Josh Safdie (half of the directing team that made Uncut Gems) working to simulate a janky, run-down operation. (A Gems bit player even pops up in the opening sequence.) Sandler, who can easily play arenas, is faced with a ramshackle operation where holes in the stage materialize, monitors fail to provide the requisite visual accompaniment to the Sandman’s jokes, and a loose dog runs around. (The canine is still less disruptive than Rob Schneider, who makes a five-minute, joke-free cameo dressed as Elvis.)

It’s all staged, of course. Sandler isn’t really forced to play a garbage-strewn, dog-run venue. But some of the show interruptions and technical difficulties, including Sandler’s good-natured-until-it’s-not berating of his keyboardist, who happens to be the special’s SNL-based co-writer Dan Bulla, are surprisingly convincing. It’s of a piece with Sandler’s default acting and stand-up style, which is to turn relatively inward (at least for a veteran stand-up) and self-effacing, rather than people-pleasing performative. He works in other registers, of course, but Love You is clearly designed to emphasize the just-plain-folks aura that his comedies pursue – often laboriously, often unconvincingly.

Here, though, Sandler’s mumbly, casual delivery of his jokes’ set-up functions, effectively, as a second set of jokes before he reaches the frequently silly punchline. Jokes about his family driving alongside a clown car on the highway probably wouldn’t work if he leaned into the absurdity with big, laugh-milking gestures, signaling the ridiculousness of his premise or goosing the audience for a big payoff. Instead, he speeds through it with tossed-off ease, like he’s telling an anecdote to a friend in the last five minutes of a party before he has to split.

That should sound half-assed. Miraculously, it doesn’t. Combined with the ramshackle framing, it gives Love You kind of a Safie-made Muppet Show vibe – which, I must begrudgingly admit, makes Schneider’s Elvis shtick a little more understandable (if still not particularly entertaining). Bits that should come across as protesting too much, painting Sandler as pretty much a regular dad and husband who mutters under his breath during various chores and laments that his teenager daughter no longer needs him (in a song where he does find a potential use: buying her and her friends beer), wind up feeling like well-worn flannel, or the hoodie Sandler often wears onstage: familiar and comforting. It’s a far more successful selling of the Sandman as a family man than the Grown Ups movies where he’s supposed to be a relatable shlub but can’t quite let go of his wealth, influence, or king-of-the-castle vibes.

Like 100 Percent Fresh, Sandler ends the special with a sincere, even maudlin, tribute song – expanded from his Chris Farley song a few years ago to a broader appreciation of comedy in general, and its ability to get people through tough times. Like so much of his material on this special, it sounds shameless in theory, and works almost shockingly well in action – a genuinely sweet roll call of movie and TV comedians from throughout history, including his departed friends Norm and Farley. Sandler’s greatest tribute, though, is doing something he never seemed particularly poised to accomplish before: Peaking in his art form in middle age.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.