"That's My Boy" is a mildly successful return to the style of offensive SNL sketch stretched out to 2-hour movie form that Adam Sandler seemed to perfect with his mid-90's output like "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore." Like a Hall of Fame baseball player whose best days are behind him, "That's My Boy" hits some pretty monstrous homeruns in the laugh department, but like that same ballplayer, it also shows some definite signs of age and fatigue, both in the brand of comedy it employs and in the aging face of Adam Sandler next to the young face of upstart rookie Andy Samberg.

One thing I've always enjoyed about Adam Sandler movies is that his main goal is to go for laughs and laughs alone. Like most of his movies, there are seemingly genuine attempts at heart string tugging and a deeper story at play (these aren't "Airplane!" or "The Naked Gun") but Sandler's movies tend to exist just so he can make jokes about everything from overweight strippers (and strippers with head braces doing lap dances), to tasting semen, to barfing on wedding dresses, to threesomes with octogenarians (with Vanilla Ice natch), to (SPOILER ALERT) incest... yes... incest. It's not hard to imagine Sandler gathering up all of his Happy Madison team, lighting up a bowl of the type of weed rich Californians buy, and just start throwing joke ideas on the wall and seeing which ones stick. With "That's My Boy," seems like not many fell to the ground.

It's because of that very concept that I find his movies kind of depressing when I leave the theater. Despite the laughs, those of us who enjoy a wider variety of comedy sees the Happy Madison formula on screen as it's happening and we all realize as we're seeing it just how played out a formula it actually is. And on top of this, you know that there are more of these to come. If this was Adam Sandler swan song of movies like this, you'd have to stand up and applaud this movie for being pretty funny and for providing decades of sophomoric humor for those of us who enjoy these types of movies. But at this point, these guys have these movies down to such a predictable science, and because they're made for next to nothing and end up drawing pretty big audiences, you know that there are more of these to come. In "Prometheus," pouty leading man guy says to Fassbender's robot David that maybe his creator made him just because he could (to which David replied, maybe that's why pouty leading man guy's creator made him, too). I kind of get that same feeling from "That's My Boy." He made this movie because he could. Not because he actually has anything interesting to say.

When I saw the trailers for this, I thought that Adam Sandler's voice and schtick would get old. It did... but I thought they mixed up enough other things going on with Andy Samberg and the rest of the cast that by the time that we approached the second hour, I was only mildly numb to his schtick instead of painfully numbed to it like I find myself during any of Jim Carrey's latest movies.

Andy Samberg held his comedic own with Adam Sandler, which I think is probably no small feat (quick, name another co-star of any of his movies), but it's hard to tell what kind of career this guy is going to have based on his work in this movie. In some ways, Samberg is like a miniature Sandler (their names are even pretty similar), with their penchant for sophomoric jokes, contorted faces, and career ambitions, but there isn't much in this movie that shows off Samberg's comedic chops.

There were a few moments where I thought the movie was going to shift Samberg's mild mannered ways and start showing off a more tough side, but following interesting narrative leads is not the purpose of Sandler's movies. It's far more interested in sophomorically poking fun at incest and drinking, gold-glove winning priests to actually be anything interesting.

The rest of the cast is largely forgettable, as they are in all of Happy Madison's movies. There's the overbearing brother type (Milo Ventimiglia), the hot love interest (Leighton Meester), the foul mouth grandma type (Peggy Stewart -- what, you couldn't afford Betty White?), and the rest of the Happy Madison/SNL crew who always show up in these movies (Will Forte, Rachel Dratch, Nick Swardson, et al).

In that way, the movie's strength is also its weakness. It's far more interested in providing laughs than it is in being interesting and something that sticks with you when you leave the theater. I hate to hedge bets, but if you're looking for something to make you laugh and laugh alone, I give it a 7/10. But as a comedy that you'd ever watch again (unless you're a frat boy, a guy who thinks incest jokes are hilariously funny, or a 20 year old who smokes ample amounts of weed with other 20 year olds -- ladies and gents, Sandler's demographic), I gotta give it a 5/10.