cringe, again
with hindsight, a movie i would not watch over for anything
You might say that “cringe” is Adam Sandler’s stock-in-trade. I can’t imagine anyone seeing all of his movies, but he sure has made a lot of them. Up until Uncut Gems (2019)*, if i am not badly mistaken, most of his characters were nebbish-underdog types with readable autistic features. This sort of thing is far from my taste in movies (i hate most contemporary comedies), but there was something to be said for Punch Drunk Love (2002)—a Paul Thomas Anderson film which benefits from his vision & attention to detail—only, i think, this also shows just how problematic the readable-as-autistic type really is. I don’t know exactly how old the character was supposed to be, but it is not hard to figure that Sandler was 36 when this one was released. So while the plot, which takes a catfishing dupe into surreal extremes, does have some relation to the experience of adult autistics, it is entirely unrealistic in positing that an autistic of this age would never have been deceived before. Deception, in fact, is an autistic’s overall experience with neurotypical society—unrecognized at the start, but catching on fast--& the real-world reaction of such a person in that predicament, would not be a desperate hanging-on to one’s illusions (this reaction, rather, belongs to neurotypicals), but rather an aggrieved recognition that, ONCE AGAIN, I AM BEING TREATED AS A GULLIBLE CHILD. That no one connected with the making of this film even considered such a possibility, argues mainly for the non-involvement of anyone on the spectrum with its production.
But you knew that already, didn’t you?
*a movie which can only be explained by someone daring Mr Sandler to play an entirely “unrelatable” character, & by him feeling Alexander’s “no more worlds left to conquer” ennui--or maybe just drugs