written by : by steve franks , tim herlihy and adam sandlerstarring : adam sandler , joey lauren adams , jon stewartsynopsis : sonny koufax ( adam sandler ) is a rich , childish , angry man who has just been dumped by his girlfriend vanessa ( kristy swanson ) . in a bid to impress vanessa sonny impersonates his friend kevin ( jon stewart ) and adopts a 5 year old boy named julian ( cole and dylan sprouse ) while kevin is on an overseas trip . under sonny's supervision julian soon learns to lie to women , tell people how he " wipes his ass , " throw tantrums , and scream for his " god damned " treats . self centered , julian breaks a school classmate's arm without apologizing or even realizing he has done anything wrong . meanwhile sonny bribes julian with sugary talk , food , toys , and flashy promises in order to get the kid to perform . not surprisingly the government takes julian away from sonny's incompetent supervision , and this leads to a custody battle . opinion : it's a movie about an embittered creep teaching a little kid to be a jerk , and we all get cheap laughs because for 90 minutes the innocent kindergartner never finds out what it means when he mimics all the bad boy behavior . that's the essence of big daddy . but there's a bigger issue involved : marketing . movies that are rated pg and pg-13 are heavily marketed towards children of preteen age and below . on tv , film clips advertise these movies as family-friendly hit comedies . then when you go see them they turn out to be either raunchy sex acts like austin powers with characters named fat bastard - - or big daddy where adult characters get their jollies by buddying up to naive five year olds and encouraging them to experiment with drugs and mistreatment . folks in hollywood are trying to develop a preteen market for raunchy stuff , but i think most american parents would agree that early childhood is a time of mental innocence that should be protected from uncaring media market exploitation . to many american mothers there's probably nothing more pathetic and unsettling than the sight of a theater full of unsupervised little eight year olds laughing raucously as movie character father adam sandler jokes about a woman's " ice cold tits . " 
