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Ridiculous 6

12/15/2015

27 Comments

 

D
1.00

​An outlaw who was raised by Native Americans discovers that he has five half-brothers; together the men go on a mission to find their wayward, deadbeat dad.

Directed by Frank Coraci

​Initial Review by Sean Riley

Picture
It’s a shame Ridiculous 6 is being wasted as a full MMC pick.  We owed it to ourselves to watch this movie via synchronized Netflix’s some late Friday night with a 1000 comment live thread. The last time we did that I dropped my remote in my scotch.  Unfortunately we decided to watch when prose was called for. 

 With all the hullabaloo behind the filming of Ridiculous 6, it was surprisingly less offensive than your average Sandler film.  Sandler’s wheelhouse has become the lowest common denominator of comedy. By lowest common denominator, I don’t refer to dick and fart jokes; I refer to lazy dick and fart jokes and playing the moron for amusement.  His movies always feature characters with apparent IQs in the neighborhood of borderline retarded and usually place them at the butt of much of the “funny” Typically this part is played by Rob Schneider or sometimes Sandler himself.  Ridiculous 6 features half of the members of the titular 6 as well the entire left-eye gang and a handful of others right in Sandler’s IQ sweet spot.  I suppose when you’ve made your fortune pandering to an audience just a shade north of that line you don’t need to change things or try anything new.  Perhaps the fact that Ridiculous 6 was ultimately relegated to Netflix instead of the traditional theatrical distribution will inspire at least an attempt from Sandler’s next effort.

I suppose to break down the movie I’ll do so by breaking down the 6 individually.

Adam Sandler is Tommy, leader of the 6.  A white guy raised by the Noble Apache who is basically a superhero with his “mystical shit” and knife skills.  Of all the 6 he’s the most boring.  He wasn’t too bright with his judge of character of his dad even knowing he was a career criminal.  It also isn’t very noble of him to essentially recruit a handful of seemingly law abiding citizens to joining his criminal enterprises.  Tommy is pretty meh.
 
Rob Schneider plays Ramon, a Mexican.  Since blackface is accepted as wrong when will they stop spray tanning Jewish guys and making them Mexican? Ok he’s a quarter Filipino but that’s not the same thing.  Anyway, I suppose had he asked Diego Luna to play a moron with an unhealthy relationship to his burro Diego probably suggested Rob Schneider for the role.  Speaking of the burro- the shit gag was only funny when the guy made the burro wood carving that also shat.  In a spectacular upset, Schneider is not the worst supporting actor in this movie.  Perhaps his experience playing nearly the same role in almost every Adam Sandler movie and his own starring vehicles gives him the edge.  His twitchy face during the classic western standoff stood out as being the best of the bunch.            


Taylor Lautner plays Lil Pete the half-wit. Yep, they call him half-wit in this movie and Lautner played him a quarter wit.  Lil Pete is said to have a strong neck, good thing you let us know when you introduced him that we’d get one of those hilarious hanging gags later on and boy did they payoff.  Also, when papa Nick Nolte tells Lil Pete the mom just poops out the babies, that was what they call in the comedy world a call-back.  They also call it a joke that didn’t land.  Lautner wins Worst Supporting Actor in my book.
 
Jorge Garcia plays Herm who seems to be an unintelligible mountain man???  Later we found out his mom just drank a ton of moonshine while pregnant.  I guess maybe the cast parties were fun because I can’t imagine someone actually wanting to play that part.  The only thing that kept him from Worst Supporting Actor was a sublime performance by Lautner and his headless Harvey Keitel impersonation.

Luke Wilson is very Luke Wilsony as Danny, the disgraced Abraham Lincoln Secret Service guard.  I like Luke Wilson being Luke Wilson so that’s good for me but I know not everyone likes that.  The flashback of his leaving Lincoln behind to take a shit while checking with Abe and Nancy to see if they needed anything from concessions was one of the highlights of the movie.  His guilt being cured from Nolte’s “shit happens” line is one of many examples of the laziness of the script.  Much better after he steps in front of a bullet and sees Tommy as Lincoln for his redemption.


Terry Crews is Chico.  Terry Crews can do no wrong.  He’s a beautiful human being.  The moment he confesses to his brothers to being half-black is mildly amusing even if a similar reveal hadn’t been done a number of times in better movies.  His sincerity is what pulls it off.       

So clearly 2/6 of the crew doesn’t suck.  And since Braden is reducing fractions this week let’s call it 1/3 redeemable. If you want to say Tommy and Ramon combine for .75 redeeming we’re now at 2.75/6 which is still below 50% and it’s F territory by those numbers.

Good thing we have John Turturro as Abner Doubleday with his on the fly invention of baseball, er Sticky McShmickens.  That was good stuff. Turturro delivered as the man-servant with a foot fetish in Mr. Deeds, he was a fun terrorist in Zohan and he provided the best scene in Ridiculous 6.  Keep hiring that man Adam Sandler.
 
On the same token, the left eye gang was legit fun.  Steve Zahn has always been good at the crazy weirdo,  Bill Hader can do anything, and Nick Swardson was born to play morons in Adam Sandler movies.  LaVell Griffin didn’t get much to work with but his delivery was on par with the rest of his gang. The weak link was Adams real life nephew Jared Sandler whose imdb page consists only of Uncle Adam movies. No coincidence.

Now for the bad side characters… the whole poker scene should’ve been ditched. This movie was way longer than it needed to be and they could’ve just gotten away with making enough cash in a 10 second montage without having the scene. Although, then David Spade would be out of work.  I’m thinking Blake Shelton got the Wyatt Earp gig because Kevin James was off filming more Paul Blart movies.
​
Danny Trejo does Danny Trejo things, Wears no Bra and Smokin Fox are lazy indian names that offer no comedy or substance.  Steve Buscemi and Harvey Keitel are both mostly wasted and could’ve been played by anyone.  It’s almost insulting that Sandler parades so many stars in cameo roles not worthy of their talents.
 
Ultimately, the greatest failing of Ridiculous 6 is its inability to commit.  Was Sandler and co. affected by the bad publicity and decided to tone some of the more offensive bits down or were they simply lazy writers and forgot to pepper in jokes?  If he wanted to create a modern Blazing Saddles he needed to go all out.  Perhaps the sophomoric charm that America fell in love with loses its appeal as Sandler nears 50.  Side characters save the day but can only elevate this to a D.

Initial review by Sean.
27 Comments
Admin
12/15/2015 11:40:33 pm

Space reserved for replies to initial review.

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Bryan
12/15/2015 11:49:25 pm

Probably an ominous sign when the first two reviews are nearly identical in terms of pointing out what was actual funny and what could have been.

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Mork
12/30/2015 07:51:01 pm

Sadler movies are mostly sub par (sic) he doesn't really have a strong grasp of what humor really is.

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Bryan
12/15/2015 11:40:56 pm

Let’s count up all the good scenes - 1) Scooping out one’s right eye with a spoon to join the left eye gang. Fantastic. 2) The absurdity of creating a sport with its rules. I loved the baseball scene. 3) Mark Twain rapping. Honorable mention - decapitated figure walking and shooting.

A lackluster comedy can be saved from the D to F range by a story that has a bit of humor or a mildly interesting or creative plot. Instead we get 1840’s Shawn Kemp. This movie should have been a Blazing Saddles update, but instead we get a genuinely terrible movie. A series of comedic actors parade on screen delivering flat lines repeatedly. And not flat as in dry humor.

The 4 redeeming scenes had me at a D, the brutality of 2 hours of trash drops me to a D-

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Sean
12/16/2015 12:22:22 am

The vanilla Ice scene should've been left in the edit bay

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Bryan
12/16/2015 09:35:49 am

It's not that it was a good scene or a good job acting - but the thought of Mark Twain being a harbinger of rap music brings me joy.

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Jon
12/16/2015 03:30:49 am

I was just listening to a Nerdist podcast episode in which Shane's friend Jim Gaffigan mentioned that he knew some comedians who hate their audience, possibly out of self-loathing or possibly out of a general misanthropy. I don't know if Gaffigan knows Adam Sandler, but based on that comment, he might, because there isn't another major Hollywood star who so frequently spits in the face of his fans. This is a man who only 13 years ago was in serious running for an Oscar for Punch Drunk Love, and in my opinion, that would have been highly deserved. This is a man who made a self-parody a mere six years ago, Funny People, in which he essentially played himself and confronted the fact that most of his work was awful and how he long ago traded creativity and spark for paydays and empty mansions. He is not untalented, but has apparently reached a point in his life where professionally, he's just given up, but still insists on pumping out garbage like The Ridiculous Six.

I made a comment in some previous review, maybe one of our horror movies, that I think every movie has some kind of unifying idea or theme or feeling that the creator is trying to communicate. That includes the bad ones, where the message is muddled or poorly communicated or just not worth communicating. The Ridiculous Six is that premise's outlier. Who is this movie for and why was it made? Is David Spade a month away from missing his mortgage payments, and his old SNL buddy keeps him working lest he be thrown out? Does Nick Swardson owe bookies thousands of dollars, and these bit roles are the only things keeping his thumbs attached to his hands? This, this consumed $60 million, and there's so little effort expended in its execution. It's passion-less, uninteresting, and only made funny through commitment from some supporting players, commitment that the producer/writer/star cannot be bothered with on any level. Movies like this throw the whole of cinema into disarray, as it pulls back the curtain and exposes the whole business as being as mercenary as any other business. It's aggressive disinterest in quality somehow makes other movies worse.

The premise alone docks The Ridiculous Six at least two letter grades. Why does Sandler have to be raised by Indians? Why can't he just be a Man With No Name-type? Why does he have to go the well of 'white guy joins native culture and becomes the greatest member the culture's ever seen?' Why does he have to speak in the halting, Old West style of very tan white dudes playing Indians? The only possibility of this being a good idea, on any level, is that it's intended satirically, but Sandler is incapable of that, especially at this stage of his career. Anytime the creative force behind a project casts themselves in the movie and insists that everyone tell their character how awesome they are, I am immediately skeptical of motivation. To his credit, I don't recall instances of the movie openly laughing at the Indian characters, with the exception of the predictably awful names of the Indian women, but the tone of a movie that includes Custer as a character but still manages to end with the Indians and white people all dancing and getting along is mind-boggling. I eagerly anticipate the sequel, The Ridiculous Zero, in which everyone is killed at Wounded Knee.

Brief digression: what must it have been like to write this movie? Taking the opening scene as an example, how long did Sandler and writing partner Tim Herlihy come up with names that the one-eyed gang could use to make fun of Indians? When Sandler came up with maize munchers, was he proud of himself? Same question as applied to the original name of baseball as Stickie McSchtickens. Digression over.

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Jon
12/16/2015 03:32:01 am

The premise is shockingly misguided, but the pacing of this movie is almost as great a sin. No comedy with this much slapstick should be over 90 minutes long. Entire scenes and plotlines could easily be cut out. The fly scene is pure cutting room. The end result was that the donkey got hitched to the wagon, and I paid close attention to whether or not that became important. It did not. They need 50k to rescue Nolte, and they get it, twice. Why not just get it once, and either cut the historical figure poker game or the one-eyed gang? As is, it's literally running in circles. Why does Nolte have to do a heel turn at the end? Why can't he be rescued, have a nice moment, and then cut to wedding? Was it because Sandler needed to have a wildly out-of-place moment of intensity in the mines, thinking he'll somehow not get a Razzie for this to go with the one he's surely going to get from The Cobbler? I feel like I just cut 40 minutes out of this and saved $15 million. Where's my parade?

Riley talked about the terrible supporting cast, but no one is as bad as Sandler. This is worse than The Cobbler, and if there's any justice in the world of cinema, 2016 will go down as the year Sandler's endless well of indulgence dries up. What has possessed him to think that he should play the straight man, in anything, ever? He broke out as a silly, joyful persona on SNL, and then a cranked-to-11 man-child in his movies. He's somehow allowed himself to become a reactor to jokes, instead of a generator of them. That would be fine if he had any gifts for dry comedy, but his greatest success is the exact opposite. Set aside the broken sentence structure, the walking Deus Ex Machina nature of the character in which every problem is solved by another of his mystical powers, the fact that he never speaks above a gravelly whisper, and the horrific sight of him chanting like an Indian. He just has no passion for anything he's doing, which reduces his character's screen presence to that of a tumbleweed, something in frame as set dressing and nothing more. He is dragging his balls across the collective foreheads of anyone unfortunate enough to watch him in this, daring his audience to finally call him on his bullshit and demand that he show some goddamn spark. Instead, some number of 14 year olds are watching this, laughing at Steve Buscemi put all-purpose dick cream in his mouth, and going back to calling people gay slurs while playing Call of Duty and recommending this to their clan of like-minded future assholes.

In contrast to the tan cloud of low-talking mist that is Sandler, I don't know that I'd overly populate the Worst Actor category for the Mediocrities. The aforementioned Zahn and Forte are fine. Luke Wilson is indeed Luke Wilson. Anti-vaxxer and terrible person Rob Schneider is not a hateful presence. I'll give Taylor Lautner a lot of credit for fully inhabiting a character, one that, I might add, is perfectly cast. Yes, Terry Crews is in a period of infallibility. I will say that Kid Rock as Mark Twain is an affront to America and the Mississippi River, and I hope it swallows Rock and Sandler up and smashes them against its muddy depths. Worst Actress will get an entry as Sandler's 15-years-younger wife played by Julia Jones is certainly beautiful and definitely wooden. I'd even add John Turturro to the plus column, as making the rules of baseball up on the fly is a legitimately good scene in a sea of unnecessary ones.

The last thing I'll say about The Ridiculous Six is that The Prince and the Pauper was published in 1881, and Custer was dead in 1876. Get your fucking anachronisms ironed out, Sandler. This movie is not as hateful as I assumed it would be. No rage headaches resulted. Instead, I got five smiles, one laugh, and confirmation that Sandler is the person in Hollywood trying the least. Just retire if you so obviously hate what you do. The baseball scene and fraction of levity I got from The Ridiculous 6 earn this a D. I can't believe I wrote 2000 words on this, but I do believe I've invested more effort into this project than Sandler.

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Sean
12/16/2015 08:38:43 am

Twain was Vanilla Ice not Kid Rock. Don't know if that makes it better or worse at this point.

Also, I read an article last night about how Netfliz has buried this movie already and no longer has it in on the main carousel or in trending or new releases recommended. I checked and it's gone. Relegated to search.

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Jon
12/16/2015 01:10:07 pm

I searched on Xbox for it to watch the last scene again. I wanted to see if Custer was partying with the Indians at the end (he wasn't). It wasn't in Recently Added or Trending, even though Netflix just spent a huge amount of money making and promoting it. It was in Top Picks for Jonathan, so fuck your algorithm Netflix, you don't know me at all.

Jon
12/16/2015 01:14:10 pm

Vanilla Ice is much, much worse. My apologies to the Rock family.

Sean
12/16/2015 04:30:30 pm

MMC is breaking their algorithms, we watch some different stuff from time to time

Sean
12/16/2015 10:41:32 am

And only 1389 words, you're slipping. Beat my 1194 though.

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Sean
12/16/2015 01:18:57 pm

Stolen from IMDB-
Ramon describes tacos to his brother Pete as having crispy shells. However, the hard-shell taco was not actually invented until the late-1940s (this version was first popularized by Taco Bell).

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Drew
12/16/2015 10:02:14 am

This film was an abomination to film. I would rather Troll 2 and The Room in back - to - back fashion twice than to ever re-watch this.

Possibly one of the worst films ever chosen by the MMC. This should be the Donald Trump of all the picks.

One line saved it from the depths of failure and that was Terry Crews' line about his talent. Because that line made me laugh for twenty consecutive seconds it barely passes.

Sandler films should be placed in the depths of an old Blockbuster vault and only opened when one needs to feel better about him/herself.

Grade: D-

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Sean
12/16/2015 10:32:18 am

The dick piano was the one call back they never gave us.

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Drew
12/16/2015 02:11:53 pm

While I am thinking about it, screw you Rob Schneider. The only funny thing you've done in the past thirty years was the iconic character on SNL. And one more thing, leaving SNL. The moment I heard that unfunny jerk's voice, the movie almost came to an early end. Call him the Jon Favreau of comedy. Schneider is possibly the worst actor of all time.

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Sean
12/16/2015 04:31:23 pm

The copy machine guy or are you thinking of a different SNL character

Drew
12/16/2015 04:51:57 pm

Yes.

Phil
12/16/2015 12:26:48 pm

The Ridiculous 6 comes with a lot of baggage being a Happy Madison movie. It’s right up there with the Jason Friedberg/Aaron Seltzer parody movies in that they just immediately start at a D in everyone’s book and it is then up to the HM gang to move that to either a C or an F. They are almost impossible to judge in a vacuum objectively. So I think we all have to acknowledge R6 comes with almost insurmountable baggage to begin. 95% of reviewers are coming into the movie expecting to hate it.

Another important point with HM movies is that the bulk of them are made specifically for kids at this point. I actually watched Pixels right before R6, and my tweet review of it would be: “This will definitely be some 8-12 year olds favorite movie ever until they’re 18.” And that’s fine for most HM movies. They’re for kids, kids find them funny, moving on. I’m not the target audience for Adam Sandler anymore. He’s just doing something different now. As Kissel pointed out, this is a guy with surprising talent when he feels like trying. Good directors have gotten good performances out of him. And for how much of a mess The Cobbler is, Sandler’s performance is not even in the top 10 of my issues with it.

Ridiculous 6 is a throwback to the origins of Happy Madison, breaking out of the PG mold and finding more common ground with Joe Dirt than Click. They relied on a handful of funny ideas, aimed mostly at high school males, with the plot as no more than filler to facilitate movement from one scene to the next. This time around, it just seems like a lot of the ideas aren’t that funny and the characters are either too cartoony or too straight man. I didn’t plan on lauding the positive qualities of movies like Joe Dirt or Grandma’s Boy, but here it goes. Both of those movies at least built memorable characters with some heart. Joe Dirt himself is definitely a bit silly, but he can have a conversation and be goofy both at the same time. That just doesn’t exist in R6. We either get wooden and lethargic like Tommy, an unfunny stereotype going far beyond the realm of possible like Li’l Pete, or a lame facsimile of a real person like Vanilla Twain.

Ultimately, it’s the weakness of any characters being memorable or any scene being worthwhile enough to string the meandering 120 minutes together that crushes The Ridiculous 6. That said, I’d recommend it to any male aged 13-17 with a juvenile sense of humor. And headless Harvey Keitel firing pistols wildly into the air made me laugh for 90 straight seconds. Anything that can do that gets a D+ from me at minimum. So R6 gets a D+.

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Sean
12/16/2015 01:12:36 pm

Joe Dirte is cinematic brilliance. It's sophomoric humor with heart. That doesn't sound like much but it must be damn near impossible because so few movies pull it off. Plus, when was the last time you were near a fireworks stand and didn't ask whoever you were with if they had any whistling bungholes?

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Joe link
12/18/2015 05:11:41 pm

Okay, look. Here's what is about to happen. I'm making my review comeback. I'm officially on winter break and I've got a sixer of Bells Two Hearted chilling in the fridge. After I put the boys down I'm going to turn this train wreck on and watch it. After weeping from watching my favorite actor as a teen and early twenty-something make another flick he didn't give a shit about I'll write a response. At least I'll have good beer. May God have mercy on the souls who voted for this movie. I award you no MMC points.

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Bryan
12/18/2015 06:12:37 pm

Welcome back for two weeks. We're always here.

Ooh. Weebly updated their reply coding. Sweet.

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Joe link
12/19/2015 01:04:02 am

Kinda drink right now. Proceeding to pass out.

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Sean
12/19/2015 10:23:54 am

I'm not sure this counts as a review Joe

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Cooker
1/25/2016 02:39:00 pm

Ridiculous 6. Well, ridiculous is right. Looking at other reviews (hell, I’m always late with these things anyway), I easily agree with many of them. Adam Sandler had his prime way back when and I haven’t even seen most of his newer films because they just look horrible.
As for Ridiculous 6, I’m not going to go on a limb and say “this was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen,” but it definitely wasn’t good. There weren’t that many moments that I considered funny, and for a 2-hour comedy (way too long) this made it a struggle. The plot was too simple, most of the characters were blah, etc. etc.

I sadly have to admit that Taylor Lautner did make me chuckle in his first scene. By his second though, it was clear that he was going to be the Jar Jar Binks of the movie, and I couldn’t stand anything he did. Adam Sandler’s character was boring, Rob Schneider was simply Rob Shneider, Jorge Garcia’s character was stupid. I did enjoy Luke Wilson and Terry Crews’ roles, but the most intriguing portions of the film, in my opinion, was with the Left Eye Gang.

Unlike many previous reviews, I did not care for the baseball scene. I found it amusing, yes, but it also literally felt like an intermission sketch. Did it advance the minimal plot in any way? Did I miss something? I did like the poker scene. Vanilla Ice’s take on Mark Twain was interesting and from what I’ve read about Twain, maybe even a little true.

I don’t have much else to say on this since the conversion is practically over. It was an Adam Sandler comedy that was way too long and provided minimal laughs. But hey, I’ve seen worse. D+ on this one.

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Kaynette Williams Married link
12/24/2016 12:55:03 am

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