The Ridiculous Six

Director: Frank Coraci

Cast:  Adam Sandler, Terry Crews, Jorge Garcia, Taylor Lautner, Rob Schnieder

Running Time: 120 minutes

Country: US

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]found myself playing a little guessing game as I watched Adam Sandler’s latest film, The Ridiculous Six: spot the joke. A standard comedy flop will fail based on unfunny jokes but Sandler isn’t content to settle on such middling levels of ineptitude. He instead constructs a film so flat that I honestly could not discern whether humour was even the intention on many occasions. The Netflix satire, unable or just unwilling to form any real semblance of wit simply throws countless actors, funny voices and shit gags at its audience hoping that something will stick.

Allow me to backtrack a little. I could stop now and my initial thoughts would simply join a growing canon of Sandler film criticism, which, over many years, has attempted to grapple with the humour vacuum that most of his recent work lives in. You could take this first paragraph and replace the title with Grown Ups or Jack and Jill and the assessment would still apply. The fact of the matter is that being a film critic never feels more redundant than when reviewing The Ridiculous Six. Every critic has already torn it to shreds, some even citing it as a new low for the comedian (an impressive feat).

This will have little effect on his work process and he will continue to churn out films of similar quality, undeterred by external criticism.  More depressing is that he will continue to be successful in doing so, as exemplified by his four-picture exclusive deal with Netflix. For me, breaking from the monotony meant resisting the enjoyable, but far too easy task of simply bashing the film. This sentiment is, in itself, representative of The Ridiculous Six. The film’s laziness, to the point of offensiveness, inspired me to adopt a new perspective, so that at the very least, the last two hours of my life would not be completely wasted.

It dawned on me that just because the film is mind numbingly incompetent doesn’t mean that it’s not worth seeing.

It dawned on me that just because the film is mind numbingly incompetent doesn’t mean that it’s not worth seeing. On the contrary, Sandler’s latest exercise in trying as little as he can provided me with something truly valuable. As I sat through a story that could barely justify being one hour let alone two, my guessing game allowed me to ponder the nature of comedy. Were certain scenes failed attempts at humour, or did the creators realise they didn’t even need to include actual jokes to get viewers? Did it pass as satire simply by placing juvenile gags in the context of a western and referencing The Magnificent Seven in its title?

My expectations reached such a nadir that I genuinely found Taylor Lautner going ‘full retard’ quite funny, but does that mean I should give it more credit? Did the writers honestly think that they could convince the audience their jokes were funny if the characters themselves laughed at them each time? I tied myself in a knot pondering these questions but nonetheless, it was an interesting exercise.

One thing that cannot be excused or brushed over is the rampant racism and misogyny that permeates practically every scene of the film. While having a donkey power-shit over the wall is stupid but harmless, this film’s treatment of women and ethnic minorities is simply inexcusable. Female characters appear purely as motionless objects to be mocked and sexually humiliated, and as two-dimensional narrative devices.

Meanwhile, Rob Schneider’s Mexican seems incapable of not littering his language with references to tacos or chimichangas. As for the treatment of Native Americans, is anyone even remotely surprised that twelve Native actors walked off set citing racism, seeing as they are designated names like ‘Beaver Breath’ and ‘Smoking Pot’?

Simply put, The Ridiculous Six is a poor excuse for a film, but of course it is. From the moment that Adam Sandler announced that he would be making a satirical western that co-starred regular collaborators like Rob Schneider and David Spade, the good money was that it would be terrible.

Simply put, The Ridiculous Six is a poor excuse for a film, but of course it is. From the moment that Adam Sandler announced that he would be making a satirical western that co-starred regular collaborators like Rob Schneider and David Spade, the good money was that it would be terrible. This doesn’t mean that it can’t be of use. Yes, getting through it was hard, but I’d be lying if I said that the process of reviewing it wasn’t a cathartic experience. I’d recommend you all do the same.