Billy Madison (1995)

Billy Madison arrives from 1995, a full two decades before the current critical vocabulary took shape, and it shows. The film is a Sandler vehicle directed by Tamra Davis, who was brought in after the studio lost patience with her predecessor three days into shooting. It opened at number one, made back its modest budget, and was savaged by critics who found its star's belligerent energy exhausting. Time has been kinder to it than Roger Ebert was, though kindness of that sort is not the same as cultural relevance. On the markers that concern us, the picture sits close to the floor.

There are faint traces, and we record them for the archive. The cast is almost entirely white, with Theresa Merritt appearing as the family maid and no one commenting on the arrangement. Veronica Vaughn, the third grade teacher, deflects Billy's advances and is permitted competence, and the ending sends him toward a teaching career, which a generous reader could file under feminist, though the surrounding comedy leers at women with real commitment. The Revolting Blob, a running gag about a fat wrestler, forecloses any body-positive reading on contact. Race, climate, queerness, neurodivergence, and the historical record are simply not subjects this film has any interest in.

What remains is the moral, such as it is. Billy declines the chief executive's chair, hands the empire to the loyal operations man, and announces he will go to college. Money, the film suggests, is not everything, a sentiment it undercuts by luxuriating in the mansion, the staff, and the private schooling. The critics of the day noticed a limp "Yahoo for education" slogan and observed that no muscle stood behind it. They were correct. Here is a comedy that lectures no one and means nothing beyond the next gag, which is its own kind of integrity.