The Surprising Staying Power of Adam Sandler’s Big Daddy

Getty Images. A24. MH Illustration.3 min readEARLY ON IN Jordan Firstman’s dramedy Club Kid, druggie-with-a-heart-of-gold Peter has to shepherd his surprise 10-year-old son through an apartment party. Despite knowing each other for just a few hours, the club promoter and his child hold hands as he guides the way through the bacchanal. It’s a metaphor—what isn’t these days?—and it’s also kind of a recreation of a key sequence in Adam Sandler’s Big Daddy.In that movie, 5-year-old Julian “Frankenstein” McGrath (played by young Dylan and Cole Sprouse) holds his hand aloft before he steps off the sidewalk, looking for help from his newfound father.Replace McDonald’s breakfasts with coke and ketamine (plus a Charlie Kirk reference), and A24’s Club Kid is the clear heir apparent to the 1999 Sandler comedy. I’m far from the first person to make the connection. IndieWire’s David Ehrlich’s first-impression response was to ask: “What if A24 made a gay Big Daddy?”It may seem like an odd movie for a brand like A24 to mirror. However, Big Daddy is somehow the film from the peak Sandler run that has had the longest shelf life, in my opinion. In fact, it may be the late ’90s–early 2000s comedy with the best depiction of the 2026 way of life. For better—or for worse.Getty ImagesDespite the fact that it was a hit at the box office, Big Daddy was reviled at the time of its release, even winning Sandler a Razzie Award for Worst Actor.And, sure, it’s not the most elegant film—with its near-incessant Hooters jabs and Rob Schneider’s catastrophic accent—but still, it’s managed to stick around in the public consciousness for nearly 30 years. And it’s not just Ehrlich and I who think so.“I particularly loved Big Daddy. That was my number one,” Paul Thomas Anderson said on an episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast in 2017 when asked about casting Sandler in his film Punch-Drunk Love. “It was a little bit more polished; it was able to be sincere and [mix in] the crazy fucking dirty shit that Sandler likes to do and got the mix really right.”A24In Club Kid, promoter Peter (Firstman, who wrote, directed, and stars) somehow ends up in charge of a precocious kid while flailing in both romance and his career. Peter, like Sonny, has to instantly shift his lifestyle, one that only functions when you have little to care for, including yourself. Both protagonists need an act of God to abandon their early-30s doldrums.And honestly, it’s a sentiment that a lot of people my age (including myself) can relate to.Getty ImagesAt the tail end of October, The New York Times published a story (which, thankfully, my parents haven’t sent to me yet) titled “Can’t Afford a Home. Can’t Afford a Baby. Can’t Afford Life. This Is 30.” The gist is that millennials feel burned out now that they know they’re unlikely to achieve the luxuries earlier generations enjoyed.“In the past, the idea was that you would check all these boxes by 30, give or take. But the more I think about it, so much of that is incredibly out of reach,” says one source in the article. Even decades ago, Sonny Koufax would have probably agreed with the article, before ripping out part of the newspaper to clean up some spilled milk next to his third bowl of cereal of the day. Both films find the hearts at the center of their respective protagonists’ messy, work-in-progress stories. Is there anything more 2026 than that?A24When you watch Big Daddy in 2026, you almost forget how much of a schmuck—but vulnerable too—Sandler allowed Sonny to be. I was pleasantly surprised that Sandler ultimately loses his chance at raising Julian by himself. It’s a small, complicated victory for a movie that uses a schlocky, heartfelt monologue about fathers to reach a contrived moral coda, but we’ll take our wins where we can get them.Greg is a freelance writer and AMC Stubs A-List member when he’s not the Senior Digital Producer at Golf Digest. You can read his movie reviews and existential crises on his Aerial Shot newsletter. He’s sorry in advance if you liked something that he didn’t.