Opposites may attract, but that hardly explains the bizarre romance we’re supposed to buy in Sandy Wexler, in which Adam Sandler’s middle-aged, incompetent, out-of-touch talent agent of the title pines for, and eventually woos, Jennifer Hudson’s genuinely gifted singer, a nobody he discovers onstage in a chicken suit at an amusement park. These two aren’t opposites; they’re different species. As Courtney Clarke, Hudson tries her best to sell this relationship, expressing just enough agency to keep the ick factor from completely overwhelming the movie. Sandler, meanwhile, gives Sandy four “funny” qualities that he puts on regular rotation: dated outfits; an abrasively nasal voice; a habit of laughing and clapping at inopportune moments; and the inability to eat without food falling out of his mouth. The scores of celebrity cameos range from the expected (David Spade) to the embarrassing (Quincy Jones) to the downright baffling. (Jane Seymour? Aaron Neville?) The only performer who made me laugh was Kevin James as Ted, Sandy’s ventriloquist client. At one point Sandy barges in on Ted at home and finds him sitting at the dinner table with four of his puppets. Unconventional, perhaps, but it struck me as far less creepy than whatever is going on between Courtney and Sandy.
