Naturally, Adam Sandler’s production company, Happy Madison, is going to remake the film, presumably with the quiet dignity for which they’ve been known. Over the years, Happy Madison has gone from a vanity production house which serves to greenlight the terrible movies of Adam Sandler and his friends to… well, it’s still pretty much just that. The full roster of Happy Madison films almost looks like the Razzies year-over-year nominations list, but with a lack of Paris Hilton. Take a look at what they’ve done, courtesy of the infallible Wikipedia.

Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
Little Nicky
The Animal
Joe Dirt
Mr. Deeds
The Master of Disguise
Eight Crazy Nights
The Hot Chick
Anger Mangement
Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star
50 First Dates
The Longest Yard
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
Grandma’s Boy
The Benchwarmers
Click
I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry
Reign Over Me
Strange Wilderness
The House Bunny
You Don’t Mess With The Zohan
Bedtime Stories
Paul Blart: Mall Cop
The Shortcut
Funny People
Grown Ups
Just Go With It
The Zookeeper
Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star
Jack And Jill
That’s My Boy
Here Comes The Boom

Wow. That’s a murderer’s row of shit.

The only other thematically consistent films less respected than that roster would be the ________ Movie parody series from Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg. On that list, there are two movies I didn’t outright hate, Funny People and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. I didn’t particularly like these films either, but that’s the highest praise I can dole out to the material in question.

Of course, the Happy Madison banner clearly isn’t going for esteem, as only two of the films listed, Funny People and Reign Over Me, could be construed as anything other than slapstick comedy. But even in that particular genre, it seems as though Sandler and Co. keep cranking them out, as if they were frat boys that want to see exactly what kind of film they can’t get made.

Speaking of which, there should be a feature short or at least a magazine piece in Vanity Fair about the scripts that Happy Madison rejects. How bad do those have to be? I would think that Happy Madison would greenlight a treatment of a cartoon from Highlights for Children if Rob Schneider or Kevin James expressed a passing interest in it.

Of course, no one went broke underestimating the American public, so it’s no wonder that Happy Madison is not only still in business, but probably thriving with fare that only recently have all but the basest moviegoers have written off. Namely, Jack and Jill. So it’s no wonder they keep doing what they’re doing. And it’s not like we’re forced to watch the movies, so my biggest peeve has been that Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider, both of whom I think are very, very funny, have relegated themselves to this National Lampoon-direct-to-video level of filmmaking, rather than making more thoughtful, or just plain funnier fare.

News last month came that they were getting their paws on the feature adaptation of Candyland. Now, I’m no Candyland obsessive. I hope no one is a Candyland obsessive, actually, but I was somewhat eager to see what could be done with such rich material from a production design standpoint. I am no longer eager to see that now that Happy Madison is involved. The worlds that HM has managed to demonstrate so far are about as rich and lush as a backcopy of USWeekly. It’s not unreasonable to think, given HM’s painfully long track record, that Candyland will be a cheap, CGI-heavy parade of Sandler and his buddies doing funny voices with no real thoughts paid to plot or anything else for that matter.

The Candyland affair is as good a segue as any to takes us to the news which has Happy Madison getting its paws all over a Summer School remake. Most of Summer School’s charm comes from the fact that it’s a very humane movie that makes you love all the screwed-up characters. I can say with certainty that I’ve never loved a Happy Madison character. Especially not Grandma’s Boy. That guy was a piece of crap. Maybe this remake could force the producers to inject a little more humanity into their normally base films, but if I had to bet on it, I would bet on Happy Madison changing the film rather than the film changing Happy Madison.

I don’t know what the big takeaway is here. If you’re reading this site, there’s a decent chance you’ve already written off these types of films, probably because you’re not 14. I guess we could start a letter-writing campaign to Sandler stating that it’s one thing for him to make his own original terrible movies, but if he starts messing with beloved films from an earlier generation, we’re going to start stealing his cargo shorts and t-shirts. And then he’ll have nothing to wear.

Columbia Pictures has announced that they are taking a stab at a film adaptation of the beloved (does that word mean anything anymore?) board game, with Sandler attached to star, and the wretched Happy Madison banner producing.

I was holding out hope that Candyland would serve as a canvas for baroque production design and artful direction. The director selection (the dude who did Enchanted) elicits a profound “gunh!” from me, and the Sandler news brought nothing but a single solitary tear. Rather than getting those things I was hoping for, I will get Princess Lolly sounding like Sandler’s Jewish Grandmother character, and the Gingerbread People will be Sandler’s buddies that he keeps working with no matter how much they detract from a film.

I’m looking for a silver lining here, and I guess that it’s this: I don’t have to see this film and neither do you.

The writers for such a profile project have been hand-selected from…Kung Fu Panda. At the very least, the Kung Fu Panda writers have demonstrated their ability to take a three-word premise and turn it into a commercially viable film. That’s probably the only consideration that Universal made when hiring Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger to do the same thing for Candyland.

The studio is imagining the project as a live-action retelling of the board game, in which players race to find the lost King of Candyland, all the while travelling through magical lands that such as Candy Cane Forest and Gum Drop Mountain. While the story is paper-thin for adaptation, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in what visual treatments these whimsical stations will get in the feature film. I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little like taking a shower after this news. (THR)