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Edwin Davies: Adam Sandler managed to con audiences out of $14.3 million this weekend with his latest paid vacation/movie Blended, making for one of his worst opening weekends ever. What do you think of this result, and what does it mean for Sandler's appeal, since it's coming so soon after similar failures like Jack & Jill and That's My Boy?

Jay Barney: This is an awful opening. I respect Sandler's brand as it has brought in a lot of coin over the years. I am not really a fan of Adam Sandler, more of the longevity of his relevance. I became a fan of SNL after he left, and I did not see any of the films which brought him to stardom early in the last decade. I don't think he should be too concerned, even with this flop. He has entered the post peak part of his career, and it is clear now that not every film is going to be a breakout success. What we will probably see from him is more sequels, or maybe he will take on roles with other large leads, where he would be part of an ensemble. I am not really at the point to say that his career is flailing when Hotel Transylvania was a pretty big success and when Grown Ups 2 made a good deal of money.

Bruce Hall: Blended is a disaster, but Sandler himself is not. Here are three recent examples that I think are representative of his output.

In 2011 "Jack and Jill" may have only pulled down $74 million domestically, but it topped out at at $150 million worldwide - against a $79 million dollar budget. If that's a failure, I can't wait to screw up that bad.

In 2012, "That's My Boy" returned worldwide box office of $58 million against a $67 million budget. Ouch. No way to spin that one. Why do they keep letting this guy make movies?

They do because of movies like "Grown Ups 2" - which a lot of people hate more than Al Qaeda - which stands at $247 million worldwide against an $80 million budget.

Yes, a depressing number of Mr. Sandler's movies are garbage and I'm sure not excusing that. But if you look over his catalog, they tend to be highly profitable garbage, and that's exactly the kind of "failure" people want to be in bed with.

Edwin Davies: In terms of Sandler's recent output, I'd say that Jack & Jill was a borderline success at best, since even if it did do $150 million worldwide, that probably still wasn't enough to earn a profit once marketing costs are factored into the equation. It wasn't a bomb to the same extent that That's My Boy was, but it still wasn't a resounding success. Blended looks like it'll fall into the same category; it might get close to covering its budget domestically, but it's unlikely anyone will walk away considering it a success.

In assessing Sandler's appeal as a star, I think that while he can still have a Grown Ups 2, which benefited from being a sequel to one of his more popular films, there is a definite downward trend with his live-action, original films. I think that people are getting tired of his persona and the fact that his films are largely awful, and while there still seems to be residual goodwill towards him from his earlier comedies and occasional good films like Punch-Drunk Love, it's slowly draining away, either because his original fans are outgrowing him or because it's hard for a man in his late-40s to cultivate a newer generation of fans with scatological comedies, especially when that generation has grown up constantly being told that Adam Sandler is terrible.

I think we might see him transitioning into doing more voiceover work in the next few years, if only because the suspiciously high budgets for his live-action films might start to look like bad investment if he can't guarantee at least $100 million domestic the way that he did throughout the '00s. Or, he'll start having to slash those budgets to be more likely to turn a profit, something that seems to have started with Blended, which cost only $40 million to produce, which is roughly half of what his films tend to cost.

Max Braden: His pattern is becoming old and strained: everyone in the movie stands in a lineup, Sandler mocks someone with snide insults that are supposed to be funny, Sandler suffers from pratfalls, Sandler tries to turn it around with some sweet gesture. At least in 50 First Dates you could get behind the perseverance and the unique setup. Here you're left wondering what the difference is between this and Just Go With It, and they come across looking like direct-to-video entries in the National Lampoon series of cheap comedies.

David Mumpower: What I would add about Blended in particular is that its production budget of $40 million is modest for a title with a pair of bona fide lead actors. I presume that Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler took less money upfront in anticipation of better backend revenue. That appears to be a significant miscalculation as the only backend this movie has gotten is of the Sir Mixalot variety. Still, I think it is only being called a disaster because Sandler has become such a hard target for Internet mockery. Blended has earned $17.7 million in four days. It should clear $30 million domestically at a minimum, and $40 million is not outside the realm of possibility. The A- Cinemascore identifies the fact that Sandler’s core audience of loyal fans was once again satisfied by the project.

We are only describing Blended in harsher terms because 1) It is Sandler and 2) The combination of Sandler and Barrymore has delivered two previous romantic comedies that were each wonderful. So, expectations were raised for a third union of the two. In reality, they are no different than Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, who created three films together. Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail are both classics. You may not even remember or have heard of the third film, Joe vs the Volcano. Blended was an attempt to capture lightning in a bottle for a third time. I am not quite ready to write its epitaph despite the fact that everyone else is rushing to judgment. Let’s see where the movie stands in another two weeks and go from there.

Kim Hollis: I actually think that $14 million plus is pretty impressive given the fact that Sandler has given us a consecutive line of crap over the past few years. Somehow, people still keep going to his films, though admittedly that number is smaller than it had been. Since fans seem to like it, this is the kind of thing that may hang around for a little bit, too (a la Grown Ups). It’s really tough to understand the audience. With that said, I really do like Sandler even if I haven’t seen one of his movies since Funny People. I know he acknowledges that he’s just doing these things for a paid vacation, but he can be really charming in the right role.

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