Sandler’s ‘Big Daddy’ short on laughs> Superb cast of ‘A Simple Plan’ gives satisfying performance of novel

“Big Daddy”

Directed by Dennis Dugan. Written by Steve Franks, Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler. Running time: 95 minutes. Rated PG-13.

If it were possible to boil off a film’s poisonous aspects, those crude, juvenile moments that make an audience groan, “Big Daddy” could boil off about 20 minutes, which isn’t bad for a 95-minute Adam Sandler film.

If it were further possible to boil off those pesky, awkward moments of bad writing, bad acting, blatant sexism and even more blatant product plugs, “Big Daddy” would lose another 25 minutes. Still, not bad for an Adam Sandler movie.

But this film — which finds Sandler’s woefully irresponsible character, Sonny Koufax, adopting a boy so he can prove to his girlfriend that he’s worthy of her and her respect — has been billed as a comedy, which, unless the planets have aligned and we’re now living in a parallel universe, should mean that laughter will be involved.

Since there aren’t many laughs in “Big Daddy,” a film that’s more sweetly contrived than it is funny, more boiling is required, which brings us to the bottom of the pot and about five minutes of mild chuckling — not to mention a sense of wonderment.

Adam Sandler was paid $20 million for this?

Grade: C-

On Video

“A Simple Plan”

Directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Scott B. Smith, based on his novel. Running time: 120 minutes. Rated R.

Think of Sam Raimi’s “A Simple Plan” as “Indecent Proposal” with more cash and less sex.

The film asks a question that proves anything but simple: If you found $4.4 million in cash, would you keep it? And if you kept it, would you be prepared to accept the consequences–no matter what they are?

Based on Scott Smith’s excellent best-selling novel, the film takes those questions and propels them into a gripping story of murder, hope and greed that mirrors Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and the Coen brothers’ “Fargo”; indeed, this film is about ordinary people who give themselves over to evil.

The writing is tight, the cast — superb. Spearheaded by Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton and Bridget Fonda, the film is lifted by its terrific performances, which ignite Smith’s literate prose into a tense, deeply satisfying whole.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith’s “The Week in Rewind” appears each Thursday in The Scene. Each Tuesday on WLBZ-TV’s “News Center 5:30 Today” and “News Center Tonight,” he appears in Cinema Center.