Three decades before ‘Dogman,’ the Buena Vista buddy-cop movie paired Tom Hanks with a French bull mastiff. ‘It was the hardest I’ve ever worked,’ he says.

Co-written by Emily Mortimer, who will next be seen as part of Paddington in Peru’s cast, that’s about all we know about Adam Sandler and George Clooney’s mythic pairing. So in the absence of definite ...