Big Daddy

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

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.

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.

Variety Robert Koehler

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.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Go to this movie for the cheap laughs and bodily fluid jokes -- those are its strengths.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Sweetly dopey, kid-friendly, if overly contrived comedy.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Sandler is disarming and compelling as Sonny.

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.

Newsweek David Ansen

Just because Sandler's Sonny makes little sense as an actual human being doesn't mean he won't make you laugh.

Film Threat Tom Meek

Hooter babes and the ubiquitous Steve Buscemi is a riot as the mercurial bum on the street.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

Sander has turned mediocrity into the triumph of the smug.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

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.

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

There's some heavy-duty Oedipal stuff going on underneath all the running gags about Hooters restaurants. [25 June 1999, Life, p.8E]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Though the cast is talented, the script is a mess. It's essentially a collision of missed opportunities.

TV Guide Ken Fox

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.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Sandler is less goofy than spitefully self-absorbed, and most of the comedy feels like child abuse.

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.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

It's a flimsy sentimental comedy with more product plugs and fewer laughs than might have been hoped for.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

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.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

For Sandler's core audience of developmentally arrested males, it may all be a little too cute.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Big Daddy should be reported to the child welfare office.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

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]

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Sandler being Chaplinesque isn't pretty; he's just doing his smart-aleck slacker shtick with a moister eye.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The film lacks the moronic consistency that graces the Sandlerian oeuvre at its most pristine.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Dismal. Lame. Not funny.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

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.