4 hours ago
10
The initial fruits borne from Adam Sandler’s early days deal with Netflix were largely rotten; empty-brained and dated comedies like The Ridiculous 6, The Do-Over and Sandy Wexler. But as Sandler matured, so did his decision-making and outside of his increasing attempts to work in smarter, more textured dramatic fare, his production company Happy Madison has found success by going sweet without risking a sugar crash.
His animated adventure Leo had real warmth and insight to it while his performance in the charmingly trad basketball drama Hustle was strong enough for many to see his lack of Oscar nomination as a cruel snub. But it was 2023’s coming-of-age comedy You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah that showed where his company’s most fertile future might lie, as shepherd to a younger generation of film-makers who want to tell stories about teens that don’t patronise or undervalue. Filling the film with roles for his family – wife and two daughters all in – might have seemed like one of the more obviously bleak signs of how nepotism has corroded Hollywood but, against all odds, it worked and he’s found another role for eldest Sadie in another winner, the bizarrely buried college comedy Roommates.
Keeping a film from critics has become a telling go-to strategy for studios keenly aware of quality concerns (over the years, movies I’ve had to wait and review post-release include inert AI horror AfrAId, dumped Christmas comedy Dear Santa and limp action thriller Anna) but the choice to hide Roommates is unusually baffling, an undeniably imperfect film yes, but one with enough going for it that I could imagine some early champions. The bar for comedies, teen comedies, streaming comedies and, christ, streaming movies at large is as low as it can possibly go at this oversaturated yet underdeveloped moment which makes Roommates a film to shout about rather than quietly bury.
It’s a story structured like The War of the Roses, told by SNL’s Sarah Sherman as a college dean, and while it doesn’t dig as deep or go to quite as vicious a place, it’s a far more effective and involving tale of a dynamic destroyed than last year’s punishably unfunny remake. The cautionary fallout at its centre is that of Devon (Sandler) and Celeste (Chloe East), who slide from friends to enemies over the course of their freshman year as college roommates. Devon is smartly written as a girl who wasn’t exactly a social outcast at high school but one who just never found her people, a little too eager (described as a “thirsty little freak”) and a lot too forgettable (others just “didn’t notice when she wasn’t around”). Alternately, Celeste has the kind of effortless, hot-and-cold energy that others are easily seduced by, and at a younger age less suspicious of, and Devon, who bemoans her lack of best friend to her closeted gay brother (newcomer Aidan Langford, given a surprisingly touching subplot), seems finally ready to buddy up.
But what the script, from SNL writers Jimmy Fowlie and Ceara O’Sullivan, cleverly then orchestrates is a gradual, push-and-pull collapse, fuelled by the believable rather than the bombastic – the Venmo request that was never completed, the Instastory that was possibly shady, the poem that was maybe too revealing, an ongoing crackle of unease over family wealth etc. It often reminded me of a less lived-in, and far less beautifully shot, spin on the standout season of Insecure when Molly and Issa’s friendship slowly disintegrated, a discussion-demanding implosion that works hard not to make one side more obviously worse than the other. I was so involved, and impressed, by this tactic that I found the ultimate camel’s back-breaking straw to be that much more hackneyed when it finally comes, a moment stolen from too many films to mention and one that suddenly shifts to a purer hero/villain narrative, almost edging the film into darker thriller territory.
It speaks to a tension coursing throughout the film, between the obvious and the specific as well as the relatable and the zany, and while the film mostly steers toward the right side, sometimes it falls into familiar traps (no prizes for guessing how a scene involving an exploding turkey and Carol Kane goes down). It’s almost as if the two sides of Sandler, as producer here, are also battling it out and while, on the whole, the crudeness in the film is used organically rather than as a tiresomely impish way to grab attention, the makers would be wiser to trust in their many smaller details over the bigger, sillier elements. Keeping it all as real as they can in the more unreal moments are the two wonderful actors at the centre. Sandler is as naturally charming as the awkward rule-follower as East is as naturally alluring as the flighty, unknowable cool girl (an impressive show of versatility for East, who played something closer to the Sandler type in Heretic) and while director Chandler Levack’s direction might lack a little dynamism, she allows her performers to do their best work without distraction. I could have maybe done with a few less cameos but I enjoyed Nick Kroll and Natasha Lyonne as refreshingly grounded, schtick-free parents.
Roommates might not rival the fizzy, formative teen films it both references (Clueless) and often directly cribs from (Mean Girls) but it still belongs in a different league to what we’re mostly served right now. Could someone possibly tell that to Netflix?
-
Roommates is now available on Netflix
