| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Sandler's best movie, a surprisingly touching and consistent comedy that finds him reaching out to new audiences without abandoning the transgressive meanness that has enlivened his best work.
|
| 80 |
Dallas Observer
Hal Hinson
It's a hilarious, dumb comedy that's smart enough to be something more. And all it does is make Sandler the most soulful -- and the funniest -- comic in the business.
|
| 70 |
Variety
While the loyal male-teen aud core will not be disappointed with the spate of gags just for them, story contains solid date-movie material.
|
| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
Much of Big Daddy looks like it was made up on the spot, but Sandler, with his bad-dog eagerness to get caught in the act of misbehaving, pulls you through it.
|
| 63 |
ReelViews
Go to this movie for the cheap laughs and bodily fluid jokes -- those are its strengths.
|
| 60 |
Washington Post
Sweetly dopey, kid-friendly, if overly contrived comedy.
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
Sandler is disarming and compelling as Sonny.
|
| 60 |
Salon.com
Mary Elizabeth Williams
It's a concept not without its sweet appeal -- if only it were a little wittier, I might actually be convinced.
|
| 50 |
Newsweek
Just because Sandler's Sonny makes little sense as an actual human being doesn't mean he won't make you laugh.
|
| 50 |
Film Threat
Tom Meek
Hooter babes and the ubiquitous Steve Buscemi is a riot as the mercurial bum on the street.
|
| 50 |
LA Weekly
Sander has turned mediocrity into the triumph of the smug.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Examiner
In a sense, Sandler is damned if he develops, damned if he devolves. But he needn't apologize for being who he is by turning a goldmine sitcom into a tame "Baby Boom" for guys.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
There's some heavy-duty Oedipal stuff going on underneath all the running gags about Hooters restaurants. [25 June 1999, Life, p.8E]
|
| 42 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Though the cast is talented, the script is a mess. It's essentially a collision of missed opportunities.
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
It's not nearly as funny as "The Waterboy" and has little of "The Wedding Singer's" goofy charm, but die-hard Adam Sandler fans -- whose numbers are legion -- will find plenty to laugh at.
|
| 40 |
Village Voice
Sandler is less goofy than spitefully self-absorbed, and most of the comedy feels like child abuse.
|
| 40 |
The New Yorker
Bruce Diones
Sandler lacks any kind of discernible comic energy; he's just meandering around the film waiting for something to happen, and almost nothing funny does.
|
| 40 |
The New York Times
It's a flimsy sentimental comedy with more product plugs and fewer laughs than might have been hoped for.
|
| 40 |
Los Angeles Times
There's no doubt Sandler is talented, but if he persists in believing that, like Elvis, his presence alone covers a multitude of omissions and inconsistencies, he will squander his gift and make a series of forgettable films in the process.
|
| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
For Sandler's core audience of developmentally arrested males, it may all be a little too cute.
|
| 38 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Big Daddy should be reported to the child welfare office.
|
| 38 |
Chicago Tribune
Recycling the regressive humor of his (Sandler’s) previous films, it piles on so much sentimentality that you wonder how anyone could consider him a renegade. [25 June 1999, Friday, p.A]
|
| 30 |
New York Magazine
Sandler being Chaplinesque isn't pretty; he's just doing his smart-aleck slacker shtick with a moister eye.
|
| 25 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The film lacks the moronic consistency that graces the Sandlerian oeuvre at its most pristine.
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
Dismal. Lame. Not funny.
|
| 0 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Nasty to women, cruel to old people and tosses in a cardboard gay couple for gratuitous laughs. It's also got one of those annoying soundtracks that lays rock music right over the dialogue -- as if it wanted to distract us from it.
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