“Do you have a Netflix account?” is about as common a question today as “Do you support the Communist party?” was in the 1950s. Netflix has become the new medium for entertainment in most households. Somehow the company that had a hand in killing video stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video now has 47 million members in the United States and another 36 million internationally. With numbers like that Netflix has been able to produce their own programming. Their television catalog is exceptionally strong, with shows like House of Cards, Daredevil, Bloodline, Jessica Jones, and more recently Stranger Things highlighting a long list of binge worthy television.
Since their shows took off, Netflix decided to try their hand in producing their own films as well. Films like Beasts of No Nation and The Fundamentals of Caring show they have a solid future in that category. But Netflix is still wrapping its head around the ways of being a production company, and they might have just learned a rule that even Hollywood and audiences haven’t figured out: Don’t give Adam Sandler your money.
Part of a four movie deal, The Ridiculous Six is a spoof of old westerns like The Magnificent Seven (Which is getting a remake later this year). The budget was a fairly impressive $60 million and features a cast that includes Harvey Keitel, Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, and Vanilla Ice as Mark Twain…
Oh…
Giving your friends paychecks again aren’t we Adam Sandler? Well next time at least make it funny. The Ridiculous Six is a boring and quite frankly unfunny disaster that after watching I feel like I have to perform an exorcism on my Netflix account because I simply pressed play.
After being raised by Indians, Tommy “White Knife” Stockburn meets his long-lost father (Nick Nolte). After his father is kidnapped by his old gang, Tommy has to steal money in order to save his father, along the way meeting his siblings (Rob Schneider, Taylor Lautner, Jorge Garcia, Luke Wilson and Terry Crews) he never knew about.
How bad is The Ridiculous Six? Well, in Adam Sandler terms it’s worse than Pixels but not as horrible as Grown Ups 2. Yes, I have an Adam Sandler scale for his comedies, ranging from Happy Gilmore (His best) to Jack and Jill (Satan in the form of a film). Now saying that I do like Adam Sandler. His recent efforts in the Hotel Transylvania films were genuinely funny, so how he can’t translate that to live-action is beyond me.
Sandler and his cast of friends are mostly on autopilot throughout the length of the film. Sandler isn’t even trying anymore, Taylor Lautner is playing a character that embodies the Tropic Thunder “Never go full retard” scene, Terry Crews and Luke Wilson are thrown in at the last-minute and Jorge Garcia is playing what appears to be a combination of Rain Man and Groot that never provides any humor. Oddly enough the only one trying out of the titular six actors is Rob Schneider. Throw all of the racism complaints you want at his character but he had the most jokes that hit and he was a surprisingly welcome presence on-screen.
Rob Schneider is the best part of the film. You tell me if that’s a compliment or a criticism.
The rest of the cast feature the normal “Sandler Club Members”. Jon Lovitz, David Spade and Nick Swardson all show up for their obligatory paychecks while Keitel, Nolte and Buscemi along with others all appear in surprising cameos but don’t bring anything funny to the table. My mouth actually dropped when screen legend Keitel popped up on-screen. Harvey Keitel, Mr. White from Reservoir Dogs, Winston Fucking Wolfe from Pulp Fiction, is in another (Little Nicky) Adam Sandler film. Who’s next? Daniel Day-Lewis? Jack Nicholson? The corpse of Alfred Hitchcock?
The story is a boring and overlong attempt to wring some laughs out of a clichéd western plot. I get that the film is trying to be ironic in its attempts to parody the Western films of old but in order to do something like that you must have a sense of timing and wit in order for the humor to hit, and a lot of the humor misses the mark entirely. The script, co-written by Sandler, is as meandering and convoluted as it is dull and joyless. There is no fun to be had watching a movie that isn’t funny, especially one with far too many characters and subplots that stretch this movie to 119 minutes long. That’s almost two hours! 30 minutes longer than a comedy like this should be.
Yes, The Ridiculous Six is another shit stain on the résumé of everyone involved. But, you’re probably reading this and saying “Well Hunter what did you expect? Did you expect a spoof on par with Young Frankenstein or even Scary Movie? It’s an Adam Sandler movie Hunter, what could have possibly been expecting?”. I expected someone to try! You have a hugely talented cast, an enormous budget, a home run of an idea to spoof the cheesy westerns of old Hollywood. Instead we get a movie where Rob Schneider decapitates Harvey Keitel with a shovel and Vanilla Ice and Blake Shelton start rapping at a poker table. Both of which, like this movie, are not funny.
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