The Adam Sandler milieu of male mistakes and fixation on frustration was perhaps never more concentrated than it was in his first film — which commits as deeply to its sincerity as it does to its rampant silliness.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 25, 2025

Viewed as an absurdist comedy by many, Billy Madison is nonetheless the product of a director who specializes in cautionary tales about the temptations of sin putting one's soul in jeopardy.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 3, 2022

Sandler, who shows every sign of having enough energy to make the grade, should forget about imitating Jim Carrey and find an act of his own.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 1, 2022

...an exceedingly (and unabashedly) silly premise that's employed to mostly watchable (yet undeniably erratic) effect by Davis...

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 30, 2020

A more moronic vehicle is hard to imagine.

| Mar 31, 2019

If you've ever had a yen to relive the third grade, this must be the next best thing.

| Mar 31, 2019

Billy Madison is a textbook example of a half-decent idea that never got developed beyond the "lying around drinking beer and making jokes with your buddy" stage.

| Original Score: 0.5/4 | Mar 31, 2019

The latest entry in the American cinema's investigation of dumb-and-dumber heroes.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 31, 2019

The tepid moments far outnumber the truly wacky ones, and in the end Billy Madison earns a trip to comedy detention.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 31, 2019

While not in the same league as The Wedding Singer, it's still enjoyably dumb fun, especially for Sandler fans.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 31, 2019

Where Dumb And Dumber was clever enough to play dumb to amuse the child in all of us, this suffers under the illusion that just having a central character blissfully unaware of the need for a brain is actually a funny concept.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 31, 2019

Even with all the circuslike parties that celebrate our student prince's getting through yet another grade, Billy Madison barely merits passing marks.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 4, 2018

This is Adam Sandler at his best, and his latest films are cheap grabs at what once came so easily to him.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 26, 2013

Even on its own dim-bulb terms, this runt of a comedy never locates its central joke: Is it that Billy the child-man doofus doesn't fit in with his pint-size peers or that he fits in all too well?

| Original Score: D | Sep 7, 2011

It's refreshing to revisit the jester in his screen infancy, when all he wanted was to boogie to a Culture Club hit, carry on conversations with hair care products, and sit on a sprinkler.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 13, 2011

Young teens will like brash, immature humor.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2011

Those unfamiliar with Sandler's antics may...begin to find him annoying sometime between the appearance of the Universal logo and the end of the opening credits.

| Jun 1, 2008

This role would seem the perfect vehicle for [Sandler] to display his talents, and he brings to it his full arsenal of weird voices and goony faces. Except, class clowns are always only sporadically funny and their prolonged antics pall easily.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 1, 2008

When you get that Sandler's comedic persona is meant to be annoying, like Beavis and Butthead or Cartman, the laughs come thick and fast.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 1, 2008

Wipe that smug grin off your face and go home.

| Jan 12, 2007