Happy Madison: The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

Adam Sandler is an acquired taste. At one point in the ’90s, he was one of the most successful comic actors in the world, and he had a series of comedies that matches up well with anybody. However, while his movies had a lot of fans, they never got the critical acclaim of the films by Jim Carrey.

Over time, Sandler decided to help his buddies, both putting them into his own movies as well as producing films for them under his Happy Madison Productions. Sandler’s production company has produced a ton of films, but once again, critics mostly hate them. Here are the five best and five worst Happy Madison movies, based on Rotten Tomatoes scores.

10 BEST: FUNNY PEOPLE (2009) – 68%

Most of the Happy Madison productions with high critical scores on Rotten Tomatoes had little to do with basic Adam Sandler movies. For Funny People, it was a Judd Apatow movie, and that raised it automatically to another level.

Sandler is a retired stand-up comedian who is now a movie star and is depressed that most of his work is despised. It is very meta and was a great role for Sandler, who was almost playing a version of himself. Add in his leukemia diagnosis, and it is a lot more serious than most Sandler movies.

9 WORST: BUCKY LARSON: BORN TO BE A STAR (2011) – 0%

Released in 2011, Happy Madison created a Nick Swardson vehicle in Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star. This was a box office bomb that ended up with a zero percent Rotten Tomatoes rating.

The movie received six nominations at the Razzies but then lost the awards to an Adam Sandler movie in Jack and Jill. Swardson was a manchild who learned his parents were porn stars and sets out to be an adult film star.

8 BEST: REIGN OVER ME (2007) – 64%

Another movie that is unlike most other Adam Sandler movies than any other release is Reign Over Me. This movie follows the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers on 9/11 and a man named Charlie (Sandler) who lost his wife and daughters in the attack.

When he meets up with his college roommate Alan (Don Cheadle), the two men are there for each other when they needed someone the most.

7 WORST: THE RIDICULOUS 6 (2015) – 0%

When Adam Sandler movies stopped making money at the box office unless they had another selling point (video game aliens in Pixels), the funnyman found Netflix on the rise. After years of showing other company’s movies, Netflix wanted originals, and Sandler signed on.

However, this didn’t stop Sandler from releasing some terrible movies through Happy Madison. The worst was The Ridiculous 6. This was a spoof of classic western films and has a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

6 BEST: 50 FIRST DATES (2004) – 45%

The most Adam Sandler styled movie from Happy Madison to receive decent ratings is 50 First Dates. This makes sense because it paired up Sandler with his Wedding Singer co-star Drew Barrymore again.

The film has Harry (Sandler) as a womanizer who meets a girl named Lucy (Barrymore) and falls for her before realizing she has short-term amnesia and has to make her fall in love with him every day, as he falls head over heels for her.

5 WORST: FATHER OF THE YEAR (2018) – 0%

One of the least known movies on this list is Father of the Year. This Happy Madison movie is a David Spade movie that hit Netflix and has a zero percent Rotten Tomatoes rating.

Spade is a hard-drinking guy named Wayne and when his son and a buddy make a bet on who could win a fistfight between their dads, the other who is a scientist named Mardy (Nat Faxon). Wayne wants the fight, and that is the movie.

4 BEST: MURDER MYSTERY (2019) – 44%

While Adam Sandler has created some forgettable movies for Netflix through his Happy Madison productions, he has released at least one that fans seemed to like. While still rotten rated at Rotten Tomatoes, Murder Mystery is higher ranked than most.

This is a murder mystery, as the title suggests. Sandler is a police detective who takes his wife (Jennifer Aniston) on a European vacation and ends up in the middle of an Agatha Christie styled murder scenario.

3 WORST: THE MASTER OF DISGUISE (2002) – 1%

In the ’80s and ’90s, Dana Carvey was one of the best impressionists on Saturday Night Live, and he had a few fun movies, including Wayne’s World and Opportunity Knocks.

However, when Happy Madison tried to help Carvey enjoy a comeback in 2002, things went south fast. The Master of Disguise got at least a one-percent Rotten Tomatoes rating in this film about a retired secret agent who is forced to come out of retirement.

2 BEST: THE HOUSE BUNNY (2008) – 43%

When The House Bunny came out in 2008, most people expected this to be another terrible comedy. However, it ended up being very different than expected, thanks mostly to the fantastic comedy timing of Anna Faris and the perfect straight character acting from Emma Stone.

Faris is Shelley, an aspiring Playboy Playmate who is kicked out of the Playboy Mansion and moves into a sorority, where she helps a group of outcasts come out of their shells.

1 WORST: STRANGE WILDERNESS (2008) – 2%

In 2008, Happy Madison produced another movie without Adam Sandler with Strange Wilderness. The movie starred Steve Zahn and a young Jonah Hill and Justin Long.

The film has Zahn as Peter Gaulke, the host of a nature program who learns his show is in danger of cancelation. The team learns that Big Foot might exist and find out where he is, and the misfit team heads out to find the creature.

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