Dennis Dugan

Dennis Dugan started as an actor, working steadily through the seventies and eighties in films including Night Moves, The Howling and She's Having a Baby, and he was directing episodes of Moonlighting, Ally McBeal and NYPD Blue before he had a film career of his own. His first hits behind the camera were Problem Child in 1990 and Beverly Hills Ninja in 1997, neither of which anyone would describe as restrained.

Then came Adam Sandler, and a partnership that has produced Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy, The Benchwarmers, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, Grown Ups, Just Go with It, Jack and Jill and Grown Ups 2. Critics have been merciless: Dugan has four Golden Raspberry nominations for Worst Director and one win. The counter argument is that he is very good at a job most directors are bad at, which is getting out of the way of an improvising comic while still delivering a film that plays in a full room. The Sandler pictures are shot loose and cut for the funniest take rather than the best frame, and they made an enormous amount of money doing it.

He also puts himself in them, usually for one scene, which is the closest thing his filmography has to a signature: the tournament official in Happy Gilmore, a doctor in Grown Ups 2, Al Pacino's standby in Jack and Jill. Thirty years on, the first Sandler film is still the best one.