Adam Sandler’s animated projects have varied wildly in quality over the years, but the films are all unmistakable products of the iconic comedian. Years after Adam Sandler’s long stint on Saturday Night Live in the 1990s, he leveraged his boyish charm and unique sense of humor into one of the most successful ongoing comedy careers in Hollywood. The actor’s penchant for outlandish voices and distinct brand of immature humor seemingly position him as a perfect fit for animated movies. However, while the star has racked up dozens of screen credits since his breakthrough movie, Billy Madison, Sandler has appeared in surprisingly few animated features.
As an actor-writer-producer who regularly sticks with collaborators across multiple films, Adam Sandler makes comedy movies that often offer a shared language. Even when films are not written by Sandler, they tend to form themselves around the gravity of his recognizable star persona. Sandler’s animated projects share tonal markers, even when telling vastly different stories. Nevertheless, his films operate on highly distinct planes of quality, with each film’s comfort with sincerity and relationship to Sandler’s immature persona delivering a fresh viewing experience, for better or worse.
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Adam Sandler is one of the most profitable actors of the 21st century, known for both comedic and dramatic movies. Here are the best from his career.
5 Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
Adam Sandler voiced Davey Stone, Whitey Duvall, and Eleanore Duvall
The very same month Sandler appeared in one of his best movies, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love, audiences were treated to the release of Eight Crazy Nights, a critically reviled animated holiday movie in which Sandler voices both lead characters. In the film, a Jewish man forced into community service begins to learn the meaning of Hanukkah from an eccentric Jewish mentor. The film suffers from cheap, crude humor, egregious product placement, and Sandler’s poor voice work. Nevertheless, the film shows off some beautiful animation in the tradition of TV holiday specials and persists to this day as one of the only mainstream Hanukkah movies.
4 Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)
Adam Sandler voiced Count Dracula
While Adam Sandler’s last outing with the Hotel Transylvania franchise struggles to replicate the charms of its predecessors, the movie still manifests as a relatively enjoyable 97 minutes. The movie sees Count Dracula, his family, and his monster cohorts leave the titular hotel for a summer cruise, only to be brought into conflict with the villainous Van Helsing family. Sandler’s voice work as Dracula is still top-notch and the animation is as strong as ever, but Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation seems to lose track of the beating heart of the franchise amid its scrabble to deliver more crowd-pleasing adventures.
3 Hotel Transylvania (2012)
Adam Sandler voiced Count Dracula
The first Hotel Transylvania film came at a vital time for Adam Sandler’s reputation; after poorly received movies like Grown Ups, Jack and Jill, and Zookeeper, the actor needed the colorful animated outing, his first since Eight Crazy Nights, to prove that he could still charm audiences. The film follows Sandler’s Count Dracula as he desperately tries to protect the status quo of his monster hotel against the budding romance between his daughter and a human man. By locating a strong middle ground between a zany sense of humor and moments of grounding sincerity, Hotel Transylvania lays a sturdy foundation for Adam Sandler’s highest-grossing franchise.
2 Leo (2023)
Adam Sandler voiced Leo
Adam Sandler’s Leo broke streaming records upon its release, marking one of the most popular and best-reviewed Adam Sandler Netflix movies. In the movie, Sandler voices the talking lizard Leo, a class pet who discovers a sense of purpose when he begins acting as a counselor to the students in his fifth-grade class. The film is certainly Sandler’s most heartfelt animated comedy, delivering an overriding sense of warmth that more than makes up for the uneven narrative. While Sandler’s sloppy vocal performance as the titular lizard is distracting, the charming characterization cements Leo as one of the actor’s most memorable protagonists.
1 Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)
Adam Sander voiced Count Dracula
Hotel Transylvania 2 sees Sandler’s Dracula further engaging with the series’ central themes of family and belonging as he struggles to accept that his grandson may be a human. While the original Hotel Transylvania delivers a deft balance of humor and heart, its sequel builds on both. Relegating most of the monster cast to comic side characters maintains focus on the movie’s sincere core while offering more opportunities for zany comedy rendered in the film series’ charmingly dynamic style. Adam Sandler delivers a pitch-perfect performance as the count, injecting the character with likable eccentricity without shying away from genuine feeling, resulting in a sequel that manages to surpass the original.
