Adam Sandler’s ‘Love You’ and Other Netflix Specials to Stream Now

Adam Sandler, ‘Love You’

(Stream it on Netflix)

When Barack Obama made a reference to the size of Donald J. Trump’s, ahem, crowd size, in his speech last week at the Democratic National Convention, he brought a category of lewd joke into the absolute center of the mainstream. This unlikely achievement owes a debt to Adam Sandler, who has been consistently committed to the art, at least since writing a dirty rhyme in a classmate’s middle-school yearbook.

Now 57, Sandler is still at it, and judging by his new special, “Love You,” he hasn’t lost a step. Before he became a huge star, Sandler made proudly filthy and beloved comedy albums full of irreverent sketches that chronicled subjects like an extremely long bout of urination. This new special can feel like a throwback to that era. If anything, age allows new avenues for potty humor. Have you considered the bountiful comic implications of how botoxing away the wrinkles on a penis could lead to mistaking a flaccid member for an erect one? Adam Sandler has.

“Love You” begins with Sandler heading to a stand-up show and everything going wrong. His car’s windshield gets busted, and then he requires a last-second costume change. There are tech issues. From his car to the dingy hallway backstage, we see him, via frenetic, crooked camerawork, being bombarded by people making demands — some annoying, others disturbing, all gradually ramping up a vague sense of anxiety.

If it feels as if it’s a sequel to “Uncut Gems,” that may be because the special is directed by Josh Safdie, who along with his brother, Benny, made that jittery, giddily caffeinated drama, a high-water mark of late-career Sandler. Whereas Benny Safdie followed that up by collaborating with Nathan Fielder on the TV show “The Curse” to push his genre-blurring style in more narratively complex directions, Josh wasted no time putting his mark on the aesthetic of another comedy star.

Sandler’s last special, “100% Fresh” (2018), was a key stage in his transformation from critically dismissed superstar of man-child comedies to widely beloved éminence grise. He hasn’t exactly matured — that would destroy his comedy — so much as allowed sentimentality to overtake the humor. He had help from family. His wife (who shows up at the end of the new special) and daughters are now as much regulars of his work as Chris Rock, David Spade and his old friends from “Saturday Night Live” are.