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Peter Segal

Comedy director Peter Segal makes the sort of films that rarely get good reviews, but are appreciated by their target audience of post-adolescent males. Segal's earliest credit was for directing a 1991 cable comedy special for Tom Arnold, then at the height of his tabloid infamy for his tempestuous marriage to fellow comedian Roseanne Barr; Segal also directed two episodes of Arnold's short-lived sitcom "The Jackie Thomas Show." Segal's first big-screen credit was "Naked Gun 33 and 1/3: The Final Insult," the last and most poorly received of the three films based on the cult '80s slapstick TV series "Police Squad!" His next film, '95's "Tommy Boy," starred former "Saturday Night Live" players Chris Farley and David Spade as an odd couple battling corporate con artists; despite mixed-at-best reviews, the film was enormously profitable and launched Segal's career as a purveyor of unapologetically low-brow humor. After helming Eddie Murphy's critically savaged big-budget sequel "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps," Segal made a string of three films with Adam Sandler that helped the actor grow out of his initial man-child persona without losing his core fanbase. The romantic comedy "50 First Dates," in which Sandler romances an amnesia sufferer played by Drew Barrymore, was the most commercially successful, and even picked up some grudgingly positive reviews. A 2008 adaptation of the '60s spy comedy "Get Smart" starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway as Maxwell Smart and Agent 99, respectively, was even more commercially successful, though reviews were again decidedly mixed.