Reign Over Me review

Nobody throws a strop like Adam Sandler and he gets plenty of opportunities in this story of a traumatised widower who can’t cope with losing his family on 9/11. Luckily for him he has his own personal intervention in Don Cheadle, his former roommate turned Park Avenue dentist who makes it his mission to make his old pal face his demons. Unluckily for us, that’s just the first stage in a protracted rehabilitation yarn that, for all writer/ director Mike Binder’s good intentions, plays suspiciously like Unhappy Gilmore. While you can’t fault Sandler for bringing some new kinks to his man-child persona, there’s something cynically exploitational about piggy-backing his movie-of-the-week misery to an international tragedy. And if Binder reveals a keen ear for buddy banter, his female characters – notably Saffron Burrows as a deranged patient who offers to fellate Cheadle in his office – leave a lot to be desired.