My movies just kind of sneak up on you. I don’t have to worry too much about what everybody is going to say. Anyway, I really don’t pay attention to what the world says about my movies. I just care about what my buddies think.

Sandler frames his filmmaking as deliberately low-pressure and audience-adjacent: his comedies “sneak up” rather than announce themselves as prestige projects. The remark also signals a protective stance toward criticism—he claims not to track the broader cultural verdict, instead privileging the immediate, informal judgment of his friends. Read charitably, it’s an ethos of making work for a familiar community and for personal amusement, not for critical approval. It also helps explain the recurring “friends-and-family” repertory feel of many Sandler productions, where loyalty, comfort, and shared humor matter more than external validation.