After Seth McFarlane failed to revive the Western comedy with last years A Million Ways to Die in the West, Adam Sandler is throwing his hat into the ring with The Ridiculous 6, the first of four original movies the actor and his Happy Madison production will be making exclusively with Netflix, and it’s safe to say Sandler has pretty much the same luck with the genre. The Sandler haters won’t be surprised by this, and anyone beyond those who still consider themselves fans of the actor even after the severe downturn in the quality of his movies (trust me, they’re out there) will be hard pressed to find anything approaching enjoyable here.
With a title that riffs on probably the most well known Western of all time, The Magnificent Seven, Sandler, Rob Schneider, Jorge Garcia, Taylor Lautner, Luke Wilson, and Terry Crews are The Ridiculous 6, a gang of outlaws who come together after learning they all have the same father: notorious bank robber Frank Stockburn (Nick Nolte). When Frank is kidnapped, White Knife (Sandler), who was raised by Indians after Frank abandoned him and his mother was killed, brings together his half brothers to rescue their father.
There are quite a few problems with The Ridiculous 6, the main one being the run time. At a minute under two hours, the story is stretched to its absolute limit with much of the run time given over to pointless, almost self indulgent meanderings, like the gang getting caught up in the first ever baseball game or a completely unnecessary set piece that seems like it was just an excuse for Sandler to shoehorn in his buddies Jon Lovitz, David Spade, and Vanilla Ice (who, to be fair, makes for a pretty entertaining Mark Twain). At a lean ninety minutes, this movie would have fared much better. O.k., maybe not better, but at least it would have been more tolerable. As it is, it just limps from scene to scene with no real purpose. It takes forty eight minutes for all the brothers to come together (with the revelation of the final two feeling like an afterthought), and instead of this being a kick up the arse to speed up the story, it just continues to aimlessly move forward (though to director Frank Coraci’s credit, he sure makes it look pretty), bombarding us with a steady stream of unfunny and tasteless jokes. We’ve got a donkey with violent diarrhoea, degrading roles for women, and a feral man child miming sexual acts while a simpleton looks on, not knowing what is happening. Y’know, the Sandler staples. The movie itself courted controversy with reports that Native American actors walked off set due to complaints about demeaning and racist, and yes they’re there ('Poca-hot-tits’ being the biggest offender), but overall the Native American characters are painted in the best light possible, most of the time getting one up on the dumb racists. This is could very likely be a reaction to the controversy, but it does seem like Sandler growing up a bit (or getting back to the spirt and tone of his early career), which is only a good thing.
The Ridiculous 6 isn’t an entirely laugh free, but none of these chuckles come from Sandler, who just seems bored for the entirety of the movie. His expression never changes from his default dead eyed stare, and he doesn’t even bother to settle on an accent, switching between his offensive ‘White Man Indian’ to a Western drawl with nearly every scene. This means his co-stars have to step up, especially the always reliable Crews and Lautner, who seems to have given up on being the teen heart throb status the Twilight saga thrust upon him. Beyond the main cast, there is a mind boggling parade of famous faces who just about keep things interesting, from Sandler’s usual suspects (Spade, Steve Buscemi, Norm Macdonald) to impressive cameos from the likes of John Tuturro, Will Forte, Steve Zahn, Danny Trejo, Chris Parnell, and Harvey Kietel. They too pick up the slack from Sandler’s charisma free main performance.
The Ridiculous 6 is everything you’ve come to expect from an Adam Sandler movie, so if his recent offerings sent you running back to the box office looking for your money back, you should keep scrolling through that Netflix queue.
With a title that riffs on probably the most well known Western of all time, The Magnificent Seven, Sandler, Rob Schneider, Jorge Garcia, Taylor Lautner, Luke Wilson, and Terry Crews are The Ridiculous 6, a gang of outlaws who come together after learning they all have the same father: notorious bank robber Frank Stockburn (Nick Nolte). When Frank is kidnapped, White Knife (Sandler), who was raised by Indians after Frank abandoned him and his mother was killed, brings together his half brothers to rescue their father.
There are quite a few problems with The Ridiculous 6, the main one being the run time. At a minute under two hours, the story is stretched to its absolute limit with much of the run time given over to pointless, almost self indulgent meanderings, like the gang getting caught up in the first ever baseball game or a completely unnecessary set piece that seems like it was just an excuse for Sandler to shoehorn in his buddies Jon Lovitz, David Spade, and Vanilla Ice (who, to be fair, makes for a pretty entertaining Mark Twain). At a lean ninety minutes, this movie would have fared much better. O.k., maybe not better, but at least it would have been more tolerable. As it is, it just limps from scene to scene with no real purpose. It takes forty eight minutes for all the brothers to come together (with the revelation of the final two feeling like an afterthought), and instead of this being a kick up the arse to speed up the story, it just continues to aimlessly move forward (though to director Frank Coraci’s credit, he sure makes it look pretty), bombarding us with a steady stream of unfunny and tasteless jokes. We’ve got a donkey with violent diarrhoea, degrading roles for women, and a feral man child miming sexual acts while a simpleton looks on, not knowing what is happening. Y’know, the Sandler staples. The movie itself courted controversy with reports that Native American actors walked off set due to complaints about demeaning and racist, and yes they’re there ('Poca-hot-tits’ being the biggest offender), but overall the Native American characters are painted in the best light possible, most of the time getting one up on the dumb racists. This is could very likely be a reaction to the controversy, but it does seem like Sandler growing up a bit (or getting back to the spirt and tone of his early career), which is only a good thing.
The Ridiculous 6 isn’t an entirely laugh free, but none of these chuckles come from Sandler, who just seems bored for the entirety of the movie. His expression never changes from his default dead eyed stare, and he doesn’t even bother to settle on an accent, switching between his offensive ‘White Man Indian’ to a Western drawl with nearly every scene. This means his co-stars have to step up, especially the always reliable Crews and Lautner, who seems to have given up on being the teen heart throb status the Twilight saga thrust upon him. Beyond the main cast, there is a mind boggling parade of famous faces who just about keep things interesting, from Sandler’s usual suspects (Spade, Steve Buscemi, Norm Macdonald) to impressive cameos from the likes of John Tuturro, Will Forte, Steve Zahn, Danny Trejo, Chris Parnell, and Harvey Kietel. They too pick up the slack from Sandler’s charisma free main performance.
The Ridiculous 6 is everything you’ve come to expect from an Adam Sandler movie, so if his recent offerings sent you running back to the box office looking for your money back, you should keep scrolling through that Netflix queue.
