Hustle

Release year: 2022
My Rating: ★★★★ out of 5

Tagline: Are you obsessed with this game?

Synopsis: After discovering a once-in-a-lifetime player with a rocky past abroad, a down on his luck basketball scout takes it upon himself to bring the phenom to the States without his team’s approval. Against the odds, they have one final shot to prove they have what it takes to make it in the NBA.

We have reached the finale of the 2022 Sandlerfest and the end of a long day watching 4 Adam Sandler movies. And you know what, I was happy to have a very satisfying conclusion.

Hustle feels like a pure passion project from Sandler, who, based on his previous movies, you can tell just how much of a sports fan he is. Movies about football and golf and important plot elements to take place during a Yankees game. And would you believe it, basketball played a pretty big role in Eight Crazy Nights too. But now you have a serious movie about basketball itself.

I didn't go into this movie expecting to like this one as much as I did. Sports movies tend to follow so many of the same beats for me, so they've never appealed to me. I don't even watch basketball. But this movie just sucked me in. It's engaging, exciting, heartwarming. And so much love is in it, which I did not see coming. That passion is not all too common in Sandler movies.

This is for sure one of Adam Sandler's best performances, and it made me so happy to see that this was ultimately what Sandlerfest led up to. You see the fire in Sandler's eyes. All you haters are wrong. He's still got it, and he still cares so much about what he makes. Who would have thought that our last 4 Sandler movies might have been the most consistent movies in a row of his career. Yes, including Hubie Halloween.

While this may be the end of Sandler movies as of 2022, we still have 6 Sandler movies that have come out in the time since. So I hope you enjoy the next few days as we delve into "Sandlerfest: The Bonus Movies"!