Adam Sandler’s popular success is not tantamount to the infantilizing of a once-revered commercial genre, nor is his persona inimical to the concerns of contemporary comic love stories.  Instead, the cultural resonance of his persona speaks to a number of complex industrial, social and theoretical conditions. Sandler and many of his male contemporaries currently produce frantic meditations on such androcentric themes as the emasculating effects of prolonged adolescence, virility as masquerade and the inadequacies of serial monogamy. This essay analyzes the cultural instrumentalities of Sandler’s leading man status – their significance to and use-value for producers and consumers alike.