How Adam Sandler’s Long History of Product Placement Plays Out In His New Netflix Movie ‘Spaceman’

In the new Netflix movie Spaceman, Adam Sandler plays Jakub, an astronaut from the Czech Republic on a lonely solo mission to collect space dust from the far reaches of our solar system. He also has to make time to plug a bunch of products. Sandler doesn’t immediately register as Czech – he speaks unaccented English – but his whole operation has a retro-futuristic look that undermines its general technological sophistication (in real life, a manned mission this far out wouldn’t really be feasible) with a notable lack of sleekness. That’s further emphasized by Jakub’s obligation to record testimonials in favor of products he uses, from toothpaste to disinfectant to the communications hardware that allows him to give regular interviews, presumably in exchange for some kind of sponsorship. You can tell this is one of Sandler’s serious movies because he looks genuinely weary of this duty, rather than genially accepting.

“Contract or no, I will not bow to any sponsor.” That’s a memorable line from Wayne’s World, where Sandler’s SNL contemporary Mike Myers goofed on the idea of youth-oriented product placement. In the movie, Wayne and his sidekick Garth are expected to endorse a sponsor during a broadcast of their TV show, and their refusal is juxtaposed with an increasingly elaborate and bald-faced series of promotions for Pizza Hut, Doritos, Reebok, and Nuprin (“Little. Yellow. Different.”). A few years later, Sandler’s vehicle Happy Gilmore further blurred the line between satire and winking sell-outs with a plot point where intemperate golfer Happy gets a financial reprieve by signing an endorsement deal with Subway. In the space of a cut, his genuine praise for the sandwiches moves seamlessly into a canned bit of ad copy airing on television to the delight of his imperiled grandmother.

From there, the Sandman more or less abandoned product-placement satire in favor of the genuine article. The movies might have tried couching them in gags, but the Happy Madison line-up includes promotions for McDonald’s (Big Daddy), Popeye’s (Little Nicky), Wendy’s (Mr. Deeds), and KFC (Grown Ups), among many others – often going so far as to name-check specific menu items. Spotting logo-out placements in Sandler’s films became as easy a game as looking for his buddies Allen Covert and Peter Dante; corporate products, especially fast food, are essentially a member of his repertory company.

Like a lot of the worst qualities of Sandler’s films, the product placement also feels of a piece with the whole Happy Madison universe, a clumsy-yet-canny act of faux-grounding – hey, the Sandman enjoys Wendy’s, just like a regular guy! – that likely earns his organization a tidy sum. It’s unlikely that Sandler would see any of this as selling out; by the 2000s, he was running a substantial production company with a lot of employees, and product placement deals probably help pay a bunch of salaries. The movies, too, are products, meant to reflect an aging audience of just-plain-folks; maybe that’s why they don’t bother disguising their Cinnabon shout-outs with any grace (or self-mocking shame).

The equating of branded advertisement with making an honest living becomes more explicit in 2011’s Jack & Jill, where Sandler plays an actual advertising man, responsible for campaigns commissioned by, of course, real products like Pepto Bismol and, in a major plot point, Dunkin’ Donuts. The film tries to position Jack as a beleaguered working man trying to make ends meet with his mom-and-pop ad company, though in reality he’s enormously wealthy, inhabiting a generously appointed McMansion in contrast with his pesky twin sister Jill (also Sandler), who the movie treats with alternating affection and disgust for her lower-middle-class, city-weirdo lifestyle.

Yet Jack & Jill is also the film where a bit of satire actually sneaks back into the proceedings, perhaps hinting at a growing dissatisfaction. The movie hinges on Jack’s desire to secure Al Pacino (playing himself) for a Dunkin’ ad, and in the end, Jack triumphs: Pacino does the ad for the company’s Dunkaccino drink, which we see in the film’s final scene. Featuring an intentionally cringeworthy rap jingle co-authored by SNL’s Robert Smigel, the fake ad is sublimely silly, as Pacino travesties all of his most famous movie lines in the space of less than a minute. (I have seen Jack & Jill once. I have watched the Dunkaccino ad, conservatively, 25 times.) The button on the scene – on the whole movie! – is Pacino reacting to what he’s done. In contrast with his caffeinated song-and-dance enthusiasm on the ad, Pacino turns hushed and aghast: “This must never be seen,” he intones. Finally, it seems, the Happy Madison zeal for product placement has gone too far.

It hadn’t, of course; Grown Ups 2 would subsequently set an entire endless sequence inside a Kmart. But the most recent Happy Madison films Sandler has made for Netflix have eased up on many of the company’s tendencies. Movies like The Week Of, Murder Mystery, and the animated Leo feel more like the work of human comedians, not joshing pitchmen with a company to run. Spaceman, however, goes further; it’s not a Happy Madison picture at all, and features Sandler in fully non-joking, non-joshing, reluctant-pitchman mode. This isn’t The Meyerowitz Stories or Uncut Gems, where a version of his persona fuels an edgier, rawer story. In a lot of ways, Spaceman more closely resembles the fascinating, well-acted, but often misbegotten serious projects Sandler took on in the mid-2000s: Spanglish and Reign Over Me, where the Sandman’s sitcom-ish domestic strife and misfit status would turn sadder and sometimes treaclier. (He’s wonderfully warm and offbeat in those movies, but the films themselves are messes.) Here, Sandler mopes around his space capsule, tortured by the relationship with his wife (Carey Mulligan) that he’s placed on pause for a yearlong mission – while she’s pregnant, no less. She’s dodging his space-calls, fed up with his refusal to… take her feelings into account? Stop prioritizing national glory over their life? Just open up emotionally? The movie is a little too affectedly recalcitrant to say more, or at least to say anything especially insightful about marriage.

The story swerves in an unusual direction when Sandler encounters a giant alien spider (Paul Dano does the voice) who may or may not be corporeal. In search of understanding the human race, the spider learns about Nutella (or a Nutella-like spread), which Jakub consumes directly from the tub, eating his feelings in low gravity. In a Happy Madison production, this would be a label-out running gag with multiple name drops; in Spaceman, it’s not immediately clear what he’s eating (though the spider does praise its creamy deliciousness). Product names are obstacles: At one point, Jakub can’t get authorization to use a full-ship disinfectant until he recites its tagline, a dystopian scenario that’s like a dark mirror of so many Happy Madison products-as-plot-points sequences. It’s at these moments that Spaceman is most effective – like so many “serious” Sandler performances, it derives power from the clockwork familiarity of all those comedies that have played forever on cable.

It sounds like Sandler identifies with that dutiful side of this astronaut’s job: “I think it’s just about celebrity and the fact that this guy becomes a celebrity and it’s important to the mission to make money off the mission to help fund this stuff,” Sandler recently told Inverse of the film’s connection to anti-capitalist themes. Maybe that’s why he’s stayed improbably relatable, at least for a certain demographic, decades after becoming wealthier than most of his fans could ever imagine. Jakub is compromised, lonely, and subject to market forces that seem simultaneously all-powerful and pointless. Even as a world-famous astronaut, Sandler has found another way to sell himself as an everyman.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.