Click to watch

Trailer for "Reign Over Me"

As you may be wondering, the title does indeed come from the song by the Who (who spelled it “Love, Reign O’er Me,” but why tick off the guys who put the letters up on movie marquees with extra punctuation?) Providing a stormy resolution to the end of Quadrophenia, Peter Townsend’s massively ambitious four-sided album, the song is nothing if not dramatic, almost risibly so if you listen to it out of context. We are therefore forewarned that this is going to be a movie with Very Large Dramatic Ambitions—which may not be what you expect out of an Adam Sandler movie.

The good news is that Sandler acquits himself reasonably well as a man who shuts out the world after he loses his wife, daughters and even the family dog in a plane crash. As dentist Charlie Finestein, he holes up in his Manhattan apartment with a drum kit, thousands of records and a projection TV on which he plays a video game called “Shadow of the Colossus.” (A big insurance settlement and the standard oblivion of Hollywood to the price of Manhattan housing allow him to maintain this existence in relative comfort.) When he ventures out into the world, it’s with headphones insulating his senses with classic rock and a scooter that keeps him away from other pedestrians.

One day he’s spotted on the street by his former college roommate Dr. Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle), who hasn’t been in touch with Charlie since before the tragedy. Alan has a successful cosmetic dentistry practice, a beautiful family and a gnawing hole in his soul. Don’t pay too much attention to him, though—the script certainly doesn’t, devoting all of its interest to the question of whether Charlie will ever climb out of his shell.

For two thirds of Reign Over Me, it looks as though Sandler will get away with merely underplaying; at the very least, he never persuades you that underneath this reverted adolescent is a capable and intelligent adult (though he does look good in long hair that gives him a wasted rock star look, a la mid-period Dylan or Bob Geldof). Two thirds of the way through, though, he gets to show what he can do in a soliloquy where he finally opens up to Alan, and it’s an undeniably impressive scene. There may be hope for this boy to grow up yet.

The bad news is that this was all written and directed by Mike Binder, who has been bringing his brand of achingly earnest dime-store psychology to movies and cable TV without much success since the early 1990s. He hit a career high point of sorts two years ago with The Upside of Anger, a bad movie made tolerable by very good performances from Joan Allen and Kevin Costner. (That was followed by a Ben Affleck vehicle, Man About Town, that went straight to video.)

Binder gives us no real reason to sympathize with Charlie. Sure, the man suffered a horrible tragedy, but the events that traumatized him are nearly six years in the past, and we see no signs that he is at all willing or able to put his life back together, as other people have to do. As you may have guessed, Charlie’s family was on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. I’m not giving away a plot surprise here, though you might think it is from the way Binder muffles this fact. It’s as if he was able to get funding for the movie by playing up the 9/11 aspect, but had the sense to be embarrassed by it by the time he started shooting. If that’s the case, he’s right—Reign Over Me finally insults anyone who lost a loved one that day, or in any other of the tragedies that life always finds a way to throw at us, by asking us to concur in the regression to adolescence of a man so unwilling to help himself.