College kids are very much focused on and engaged with the present. They know the hippest music that came out this month, they’re passionate as hell about whatever social issue was being talked about on the cable news channels this morning. Talk about something new, and a nineteen-year-old’s eyes light up. But talk about their dad’s favorite music or the social issues the world was going through twenty years ago, and they glaze over. So why can you go in any dorm in the country today and still find someone watching John Landis’s 1978 comedy Animal House? This film is an everlasting staple of college life. The Deer Hunter won Best Picture in 1978, but good luck walking into a college party and trying to get anybody to watch that. But if you tell them you’re popping in a copy of Animal House, they’d be totally cool with it. To a college kid 1994 seems like ancient history. Yet, comparatively, the stuff that was made in 1994 feels much more contemporary than stuff from 1978. So why is it that if you asked a college kid what his favorite line from Animal House is he would probably have an answer, but if you asked him what his favorite line from the 1994 college comedy PCU is, he would look back at you with a blank stare (trust me, I manage college-aged employees at my day job, I do these tests)? PCU resembles current comedies much more than Animal House does [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Last week, we explored the concept of shoving products into movies, but there’s an equal and opposite marketing method where movies are shoved into product commercials – especially if the character is an iconic one. There’s a distinction to be made here about the difference between celebrities endorsing colognes and fictional characters doing it, although the line can definitely be blurred. Movie star endorsements are as old as the medium, whether it’s Buster Keaton slugging out the chalk for Simon Pure Beer, Charles Bronson going overboard with his self-sprinkling of Mandom, Arnold Schwarzenegger scream-laughing for a Japanese energy drink, or Abraham Lincoln selling us churros. And that doesn’t include all the normal, run-of-the-mill advertising where an actress loves a brand of make-up or a wrestler loves beef jerky. A human being selling out is one thing, but there’s something especially heinous about a character being used to market a product because it’s an element of art forced into a square hole of commercialism. Oftentimes its done without the creator’s consent (or consent is contractually taken away from the starting block). In most cases, the original actor doesn’t even have to be involved (for better or worse), especially if there’s a costume involved. In its rawest form, it’s the uglification of something we love. This list is light-years away from being complete, but it hopefully shows a well-rounded view of different types of movie characters in commercials throughout a few different time periods.

Normally, when I hear that either Adam Sandler or Kevin James has a new movie coming out, I wince in anticipation of it. Kind of like when you know you’re about to get hit by a baseball. I didn’t quite have this reaction to the news that they’ve signed on to Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transylvania, however, and there are a couple reasons for that. The first reason is that the new film is set to be directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, who has done some great TV work with Samurai Jack, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Dexter’s Laboratory. Everything I’ve seen from Tartakovsky has been slick, stylish, and interesting. I’m excited at the prospect of what he might come up with when jumping from small screen to big, and Sandler and James’ recent track records aren’t enough to deter me from seeing this one.

Coach Buzzer (Blake Clark), an influential Junior High Basketball coach, has died. His championship team of 1978 gets together for the first time in a long time to reconnect and celebrate the life of a great man at the same lake house where they celebrated victory 30 years before. Lenny Feder (Adam Sandler) is an important Hollywood agent whose wife Roxanne (Salma Hayek Pinault) is a clothing designer. Eric Lamonsoff (Kevin James) is a furniture store manager with a wife (Maria Bello) who still breast feeds their 4-year old son. Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock) is a house husband who loves cooking shows and getting generally shit on by his wife Deanne (Maya Rudolph). Marcus Higgins (David Spade) is still single and still obsessed with sex. Rob Hilliard (Rob Schneider) is a new age mess who’s married to a woman twice his age named Gloria (Joyce Van Patten).

Kevin and Neil meet up again in the Magical Studio in the Sky to talk about their lackluster thoughts on this week’s new movies… and boobs. They also contemplate why movies aren’t making as much money this summer and what are the best sandwiches they have ever had.

I find myself shaking my head and wondering how the titans of my youth (and Kevin James) could end up here. I have to assume that, in some small or large degree, they’re asking themselves the same question. Sandler got his start making funny noises, Rock was a cultural icon with a lot of funny things to say about racial relations, Schneider annoyed everyone by the copy machine, and Spade annoyed everyone while they got off a plane, but all of these men created phrases that were repeated ad nauseam around the water cooler. Kevin James has always based his comedy around being large (like a non-threatening Chris Farley), so his trajectory to this point seems less confusing, but for the others, it’s almost like seeing the neutering of sharp comedic minds come to fruition. And they’re all doing it in one convenient movie.

As is the case with most stock studio comedies, it takes more than just big names to make a comedy worth watching. Except for the fact that your trailer should also be funny. Which this is not.

Adam Sandler. Chris Rock. Kevin James. Rob Schneider. David Spade. After not making a movie for fourteen years, these comedy kings are back and joining forces for the first time.

David Spade parodies Daniel Day Lewis for Funny or Die.