Uncut Gems

If you ever wondered what a serious movie with Adam Sandler would look like, here is your answer.

Sandler is someone in the film industry who I would place on the brink of stardom. Although many people are familiar with the name, few have actually followed his career with great interest or can pinpoint a highlight work that can define his Hollywood reputation. Up until now, we never considered to be appropriate to place his name beside the more renowned Leonardo Di Caprio or Brad Pitt, not even close. However, there may be one recent movie that could force us to re-evaluate Adam Sandler’s talent outside of his sillier works such as Grown Ups or You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. This hidden gem that I speak of is Uncut Gems.

At its time of release during Christmas Eve, Uncut Gems was unfortunately overshadowed by the more well-known likes of The Rise of Skywalker and Jumanji 2. Yet, it was selected as one of the top 10 movies of 2019 by the National Board of Review, whose list is the only one that “movie connoisseurs” should care about. The story, while it does feel fragmented especially in the earlier parts, is essentially about a dishonest jeweler in New York City who is trying to pay off his debts through very high-risk methods like sports gambling, auctioning, and even smuggling a rare black opal from Ethiopia. This jeweler, needless to say, is in quite a pickle, not just in financial terms but life in general. Even for the audience, it is a very stressful movie to watch. If you are a sports fan, a good comparison would be the heart-thumping feeling you get when you are rooting for your favourite team during the decisive game of the championship round. Now let’s take it up a notch. Pretend that you have betted $160,000 on your team before the game. Imagine yourself in that scenario and what you get is the essence of Uncut Gems.

Of course, you are not clamped by that heightened rush of adrenaline for 2 hours straight. Admittedly, the pacing takes its sweet time in the beginning and feels slow and exhausting. There is a gradual crescendo to the progression so that we first understand the stakes of the jeweler and the good/bad relationships that are escalating the conflict. Although this setup drags on for about the first half the movie, the good news is that there is only a crescendo; it builds up and up until the very end where the show goes out with a bang. And quite literally a bang, something that will certainly leave you dumbfounded. It may not be the ending you want or expect, but when looking back at the overall premise, some may say it was a much deserved, perfect fate for a jeweler who was going through lots of crap and at the same time, a massive gambling addict. While your afterthoughts on the ending may vacillate, there are several things in the movie that are appealing no matter what. The context of professional basketball and the tense dialogues from the TV show Pawnstars are all familiar features that are found in Uncut Gems, if you are a fan of either. In addition, you might find Kevin Garnett as another pleasantly familiar face if you follow basketball. At the very least, he puts up an act that is a thousand times more convincing and articulate than he was on his failed sports show Area 21, where he simply plays as himself (a basketball player from the Boston Celtics) on both stages.

If you are willing to overlook the oddly trippy soundtrack, the occasionally mumbled dialogue that is annoyingly prevalent in NYC accents and mumble rap, and the ear-deafening shouting matches between the characters, then Uncut Gems earns its right to be on the National Board of Review’s top 10 of 2019. However, this is now a perfect segue to explain my thoughts on Adam Sandler as a drama versus comedy actor. His performance in this movie is perhaps the most appraisal he has received in a long time, and the question to me is why? To explain, it’s worth keeping in mind that comedy is a very difficult enterprise in general. I don’t think the reason why comedy movies rarely receive the same widespread acknowledgement as drama movies is because one genre is more artistically relegated than the other, but rather doing comedy at the level of an Oscar-worthy recognition requires talent that is incredibly rare to come by and scripts that need brand-new revisions to avoid clichés (humor is especially more prone to clichés).

The idea that comedy is difficult reproduce seems true to me when I follow the trends of late-night talk and news satire shows. By far the best rendition of such TV genre is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. But today, there hasn’t been a single entertainer who has superseded or even recreated the humor of Stewart, whom I recognize as the forefather and the very best of political satire. His successor, Trevor Noah, hasn’t been able to convincingly recreate that charisma on the same show even though we believed that he was the best candidate at the time. The Key & Peele duo is a more curious example of how humor is not always reproducible on film, even by the same people. The show Key & Peele, at its heyday, made some of the most hilarious skits on Comedy Central TV. However, it did not necessarily promise the same results on film. Keanu (2016) was one opportunity for the comedy duo to carry and extend their TV performance into a full-fledged film. In my eyes, however, Keanu was a failed reproduction of the essence that made the Key & Peele show so popular (details of which are better put aside for a separate review).

Drama is not so prone to these issues. Drama is easier to reproduce compared to comedy, which requires the right people and the right platform. The same Daily Show with different people doesn’t necessarily promise the same thing. The same people using different modes of entertainment media doesn’t necessarily work either. Yet, drama with the most painfully conventional script can masterfully command our emotions many times. We say that we do not laugh at the same joke twice, but we do cry at the same death twice. Simply said, it's easier to be serious than funny. Perfect comedy requires a wit that is as quick as Jon Stewart’s, a pace that is as fast as a 5-minute skit, and an infinite well of creative/novel material (which doesn’t exist in the film industry). The best jokes are short – this is the basis of why funny one-liners typically gain the most likes on social media. A sample of great humor can’t be simply stretched out into a 2-hour period and follow a consistent tempo. If otherwise, they are the successful classics that are relatively few in number.

I think this immense challenge that comes with making people laugh at ease heralds the most notable comedy actors as not just great actors, but cinematic geniuses. The best several I can name are Sacha Baron Cohen, Steve Martin, Jim Carrey, Rowan Atkinson, and Steve Carell. At most, I can name ten in total who have lived throughout this century. On the other hand, I can name thirty best drama actors on the spot from just last year: Leonardo Di Caprio, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Brie Larson, Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Jennifer Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson etc., all of whom are better known in drama rather than comedy. So how does this relate back to many people’s praise for Adam Sandler’s best performance yet in Uncut Gems? To me, Sandler’s unusually prominent performance was a curious case of a fish finally being asked to swim as opposed to climbing a tree. Similarly, one would never expect a jester to be fit to play Prince Hamlet. To Sandler’s credit, comedy is a difficult art to master. You can expect the same mediocrity if Leonardo Di Caprio was told to follow the same moronic script written by delusion. In that sense, acting seems to be more amenable to revealing its apogee in the context of drama. It’s the same reason why I thought Kevin Garnett (who is not a professional actor) performed relatively well as a serious character too. In contrast, his role as a funny entertainer in Area 21 did not work, precisely because it’s so hard to be a funny personality that is sustainable on TV. Consequently, acting may not be all as dependent on personal talent as we thought. Like all things within the fabric of society, circumstances are an important determinant of the end result. And with that mind, we may come to appreciate the hidden gems like Adam Sandler even when they are buried deep in the dirt.

*All images on this post are legally owned by A24, Elara Pictures, IAC Films, Scott Rudin Productions, and Sikelia Productions.