Welcome to Statue Season! Each week leading up to the 98th Academy Awards ceremony, we’ll be checking in on the closest races, the winningest narratives, and the plain old movie magic that will decide who’s taking home the gold on March 15, 2026. This week, we’re looking back on Adam Sandler’s critical re-evaluation and whether it can lead him to an Oscar.
We’ve come a long way from Adam Sandler’s days as Hollywood’s preeminent punching bag. For much of the 2000s, he was a punchline à la Nickelback or Twilight, responsible for some of the perceived worst movies of all time. That’s not an exagerration—Sandler holds the second-most Razzie nominations with 39 nods, with seven of those being for Worst Picture. He’s got several films in the single-digit club on Rotten Tomatoes, including one zero-percenter: 2015’s The Ridiculous Six. He was routinely panned in reviews and the butt of jokes on Family Guy and South Park—a comedian who was a laughingstock for all the wrong reasons.
Nowadays, it’s not like the stretch from Jack and Jill to That’s My Boy to Hotel Transylvania to Grown Ups is considered on par with Francis Ford Coppola’s ’70s run, but, in hindsight, some of the criticism seems a tad overblown. It’s clear that part of the backlash stemmed from the narrow-minded notion that comedic acting is inherently lesser than dramatic acting. For instance, the Razzies—which have infamously fired off some of the worst-aged movie takes this side of Roger Ebert’s Blue Velvet review—were throwing Sandler Worst Actor nominations for what are now some of his most beloved comedies. That includes Happy Gilmore! I mean, come on—I’d give “The price is wrong, bitch” a Nobel Peace Prize before I’d give it a Razzie. Even Jack and Jill, once considered the absolute nadir of Sandler’s career, is looked back on at least a little bit fondly, thanks to Al “Dunkaccino” Pacino.
Amid that infamous 2000s run, right between your Little Nickys and your Clicks, was Sandler’s turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love in 2002. Anderson saw the skill set Sandler brought to the table—he told Bill Simmons in 2017 that his Sandler fandom was “obsession-level”—and how it could function in the context of his own acclaimed films. While, of course, Sandler could always act, Punch-Drunk Love is what first broadly alerted audiences to the fact that Sandler possessed talent beyond what his lowbrow comedies would suggest on the surface. The film garnered Sandler his first Golden Globe nomination, but it didn’t lead to a grand shift in his output. He reminded audiences of his more “serious” acting chops again with 2009’s Funny People, but he mostly went back to his silly slapstick antics.
Statue Season Is Underway
What really sparked Sandler’s critical re-evaluation, though, was his turn in the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems in 2019. It’s an electric, memorable (and memeable) performance in a film with far more of a thrilling, propulsive sensibility than anything we were accustomed to seeing Sandler in, and it’s since gone down as one of the century’s best. The performance was so good that it elevated the perception of the entire Adam Sandler experience. Today, something that might’ve looked like a cheap cash-grab during his 2000s run gets a far more generous reception. (Happy Gilmore 2, for example, inexplicably has a Rotten Tomatoes score nearly on par with the original.) Even his sloppy polo shirt-basketball shorts street style combo has found appreciation! Finally, it looks like Sandler’s reinvention from bottom-of-the-barrel craven comedian to uniquely skilled and compelling thespian is complete.
But there’s still one thing missing that would truly cement that transformation: an Oscar. It seemed unthinkable back in his Razzie auto-nom days, and while his alliance with the Safdies put him on the awards circuit’s radar (including a change of heart from the Razzies, which nominated him for a Razzie Redeemer Award), it still wasn’t enough to turn the Academy’s head. Not only was Sandler not recognized for Uncut Gems, but the film was completely shut out of any category. The Sandman remains without a single Academy Award nomination.
This year, he’s back for another stab at the trophy with Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly—Sandler’s second collaboration with the middlebrow dramedy maestro after 2017’s effective The Meyerowitz Stories. Jay Kelly, which is distributed by Netflix and playing in select theaters before its release on streaming on December 5, seems more primed for an awards run than their previous partnership was—for one, the film isn’t marred by Pedro Almodóvar claiming it shouldn’t be considered for an award in the first place. But more importantly, it’s a movie about movies, and Hollywood always likes seeing a version of itself on-screen. Specifically, the film is about an actor, the titular Jay Kelly (George Clooney playing what appears to be a version of himself), who sets off on a trip to Europe to spend time with his college-bound daughter after missing out on much of her childhood, and brings his manager, Ron (Sandler), along for the ride. As is Baumbach’s specialty, the film is filled out with a star-studded ensemble cast, including Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, and Greta Gerwig. But as the supporting characters fall out of the main storyline, it’s clear that the film is primarily a showcase for Clooney and Sandler. (Though Clooney’s bid for a Best Actor nom appears to be a longer shot than Sandler’s at Best Supporting Actor.) Jay Kelly is a charming, if self-indulgent, treatise on the relationships Hollywood renders both genuine and transactional, and ends with a very literal tribute to movie magic. How could the Academy not eat this up?
First of all: Netflix. I won’t get into it all again, but the streamer notoriously tends to drop the ball during Oscar season and it may be turning its campaign attention toward Train Dreams and Frankenstein, which have emerged as perhaps Netflix’s best shots at Best Picture nods this year. But also, the reception to Jay Kelly hasn’t been quite as glowing as Netflix may have hoped when the company put it out with awards aspirations.
Still, many critics have singled out Sandler’s performance as a highlight of the film, though it’s hard to predict what the Academy will make of it. On the one hand, where Uncut Gems was too gritty and, you know, just generally too harrowing a dispatch from hell to put itself on the Academy’s radar, Jay Kelly is a much more down-the-middle prestige-y film that features traditional movie stars. The Academy may see Jay Kelly as an opportunity to snag a (albeit—typical of the Academy—late) ticket to the Sandler re-evaluation party, while rectifying the Uncut Gems snub with a film much more in line with its own sensibilities.
On the other hand, Sandler’s role in Jay Kelly is pretty uncharacteristically muted, especially in the film’s first half. In comparison to comedy actors of the past seeking their Oscar coronation, it’s similar in tone to (albeit much smaller than) something like Bill Murray’s turn in Lost in Translation or Jim Carrey’s performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—which won neither an Oscar. It’s not a complete transformation, like Steve Carell’s nominated turn in Foxcatcher. But it also isn’t totally in line with the roles that sparked Sandler’s critical re-evaluation in the first place. Uncut Gems and Punch-Drunk Love utilized Sandler’s strengths as a comedic actor and simply applied them in a more elevated context. It’s not unlike the strategies that won Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams their Oscars for Ghost and Good Will Hunting, respectively. In Sandler’s case, his penchant for desperation and outbursts, as well as the endearing charm that made him a compelling comedy star, have been key elements in his most successful prestige roles. Despite their overall tones leaning more dramatic than what we were used to seeing Sandler associated with, those films often played for laughs and didn’t really have the “comedy star gets serious” reputation. Even The Meyerowitz Stories built to a confrontation between Sandler and Ben Stiller that deployed the former’s exasperated yelling that we all know and love. Jay Kelly isn’t completely devoid of Sandler’s comedy—a dinner scene between his and Patrick Wilson’s characters certainly plays to his strengths—but his character is largely quiet and contemplative.
There’s a world in which the Academy sees this positively. The change of pace in Sandler’s soulful performance does imbue Jay Kelly with some real heart. But the role also could come off as too subtle a turn from someone famous for playing big. And with One Battle After Another shaping up for two nominations (Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro) and Jacob Elordi gaming his way through Frankenstein prosthetics to Oscar buzz, the Supporting Actor category is getting crowded with decidedly big roles. The Sandman could end up on the outside looking in—Gold Derby currently has him just missing the cut in sixth place, behind the three aforementioned actors along with Sentimental Value’s Stellan Skarsgard and Hamnet’s Paul Mescal.
Still, it’s clear the Academy wants to give Sandler his flowers. The memorable extended bit he participated in during last year’s ceremony served no purpose other than to give him some screen time on the telecast. Plus, he’s got at least one heavy hitter in his corner. In a recent live conversation between Sandler and Timothée Chalamet, the latter—who isn’t coy about how much value he places on the Oscars—vouched hard for Sandler’s Academy Awards coronation: “I know it’s not about awards, but you should have a golden man in your hand because you’re one of the best fucking actors.” Regardless, even if this doesn’t end up being Sandler’s year, each time he steps into a prestige film it sure does seem like somebody’s closer to finally taking that statuette home.
Stock Watch
To paraphrase one of cinema’s great stockbrokers: Nobody knows if an Oscar stock is going to go up, down, sideways, or in circles. In this section, we’ll evaluate who’s on the up-and-up and whose momentum is sputtering out as the competition across categories heats up.
Stock up: If Timothée Chalamet doesn’t win Best Actor for Marty Supreme, please at least give him something for the 18-minute “marketing strategy” meeting he posted, which includes—among many other things—a “World Takeover” earmarked for 2031 and a tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Sentimental Value is still only playing on limited screens, but Elle Fanning’s performance has drawn enough attention to elevate her in the Best Supporting Actress race. Hamnet is gearing up for its Thanksgiving release after taking home a slew of audience awards on the fall festival circuit—can the advertised “best film ever made” propel itself to the top of the Best Picture heap?
Stock down: Anyone plugged into Film Twitter may have found their feeds flooded with negative early reactions to Wicked: For Good. Is it bad enough to kill the hype, well, for good? And if the film falls short for Best Picture, might Ariana Grande skip her Best Supporting Actress trophy as well, in solidarity? Tickets for Avatar: Fire and Ash went on sale and AMC indicated that the film will be three hours and 15 minutes—the trip to Pandora might be a tad too long for some Academy voters.
