Adam Sandler’s name can be a kiss of death for any comedy in regards to how it’ll fare with critics, but Happy Madison is about as bulletproof as it gets as a brand when it comes to box office and more recently streaming, with Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 summing up the oxymoronic company’s nature.
The first installment was terrible, but it still earned a ridiculous amount of money at the box office relative to its quality or merits as a feature film, so it was only natural a sequel would get the green light soon after. Kevin James’ second outing as the title character was somehow exponentially worse, and yet it nonetheless conspired to rack up over $100 million in ticket sales.
Nominated for six Razzies including Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Actor, Mall Cop 2 was additionally buried six feet under by critics by way of a six percent Rotten Tomatoes score. And yet, for reasons that continue to remain unfathomable even in the cursed timeline in which we currently live, people are watching it. Like, a lot of them.
Per FlixPatrol, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 has been enjoying an undeserved renaissance on streaming, with Starz subscribers opting to waste 94 minutes of their lives they’ll never be able to reclaim watching a painfully unfunny and excruciatingly terrible slab of cinematic sh*t-slinging.
Why? We’ll blame it on Happy Madison, because the evidence is there that the outfit’s name is more than enough to sink its hooks into a crowd, regardless of how dire the results almost always are.