Topics: Adam Sandler, Celebrity, Netflix, Film and TV
There's a new movie on Netflix starring Adam Sandler but this is one role that he owes to his daughters.
You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah follows high school best friends Stacy (Sunny Sandler) and Lydia (Samantha Lorraine) who are both about to have their bat mitzvahs.
While the girls are preparing for their coming-of-age ritual, relationship dramas test their friendship to breaking point and it's proved to be a big hit with critics and audiences since releasing.
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It's also quite the family affair for the Sandlers as Adam plays Stacy's dad Danny and his older daughter Sadie is also in the movie as (surprise, surprise) his older daughter.
While his in-movie wife Bree is played by Idina Menzel, who also played Sandler's wife in Uncut Gems, his actual wife Jackie is also in You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah as Gabi, Lydia's mom.
Simply put, in the movie, Adam Sandler plays his daughter's father but his wife is played by his wife from another movie while his actual wife plays the mom of his daughter's best friend.
Got that?
The movie's director Sammi Cohen told Variety that the Billy Madison star only got the role after his daughters were cast in the film ahead of him.
She said: "Sunny and Sadie were attached when I came on board, I knew I’d be working with them - that was part of my excitement, getting to work with the girls - and then we built out the cast from there."
It was only then that 'Adam came on board to play Danny' as the director put it, although really there would be few better choices to play the father of two girls than their actual father who has had a long career as an actor.
Cohen said she 'built the world around' the family unit and it wasn't much trouble to direct an actual family to play a fictional one on the screen.
Fortunately, the family was 'able to detach' from their real-life relationship and play a slightly different dynamic for the movie.
Indeed, the director said there was a 'beautiful natural chemistry' to the Sandler family which she believes translated well to the screen.
You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah is currently sitting pretty with a 96 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes so it seems to be a hit with the critics and most who have watched it gave it the thumbs up as well.
However, do remember that Rotten Tomatoes measures how many positive responses a movie got, not how positive the responses were, so while it certainly seems to be good, don't be expecting the next Citizen Kane or anything.
You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah is currently available to stream on Netflix.
