THE RIDICULOUS 6 Review
Director: Joseph Kony
Genre: Psychological Warfare
Release: 2015
I get it. I probably should have expected this. Did I heed the warnings? Of course not. I have fun with bad movies all the time. How bad could the most successful Netflix feature of all time really be? THE RIDICULOUS 6 deserves special recognition – applause, even – for its ability to defy expectations. Upon starting up the first of four Netflix exclusive Adam Sandler-driven comedies, I figured that I was treating myself to a tremendous helping of horseshit. But how wrong I was! THE RIDICULOUS 6 is much, much worse than that, surpassing even my worst expectations. It continuously surprised me in the new lows it stooped to, transcending “it’s so bad it’s good” to “it’s so bad” to “bad.” By the time the credits rolled, I was deader on the inside than the Sand Man himself.
Memento mori
Sandler plays Tommy, a white man raised by Native Americans, and apparently ninjas, too, given his propensity for jumping incredible heights, throwing knives and transforming into tumbleweeds. Tommy has to find $50,000 to bail out his newly discovered father, Nick Nolte. Along the way, he meets five other guys who also turned about to be sired by Nolte. Probably similar to Sandler & Co. in real life, “The Ridiculous 6” go around robbing banks and breaking the law to fund their endeavors.
It sounds like an easy framework to put some shenanigans on top of, but one of the strangest things about THE RIDICULOUS 6 is simply how un-comedic it is. I don’t mean that in the sense of its dumb jokes and bankrupt sense of humor (don’t worry, there’s plenty of that, too), but rather how straight Sandler treats the movie. Sandler is never the butt of a joke, nor does he ever make them. Despite hogging the majority of the actually ridiculous two hour runtime, he spends most of that time either wistfully reminiscing about dad or beating up bad guys with his shinobi shadow-jitsu. At the end of the day, I feel like Adam Sandler wants people to start thinking he’s cool, rather than a clown, but ends up being as adept at that as he is at being funny. For a movie called THE RIDICULOUS 6 with a character that plays the piano with his dick, it takes itself seriously to a baffling degree.
Comics around bow and weep, knowing that they’ll never be as relevant as this
Also a mystery is how the film managed to assemble the big name cast that it did. Sandler is joined by regulars like Rob Schneider and David Spade, but was also able to land Luke Wilson, Terry Crews and Taylor Lautner among the top billed, as well as a bevy of comedians like Chris Parnell, John Turturro, and Will Forte. Even established, respectable artists like Steve Buscemi and Harvey Keitel are featured prominently. Why Netflix, and half of Hollywood, were so thirsty for THE RIDICULOUS 6, is beyond me. Everyone here is rolling in cash already. Why they subjected themselves, and us, to this war crime is probably best left a mystery.
“So, who else was blackmailed?”
The movie is sure to offend just about everybody. Native Americans have names like “Smoking Fox,” “Beaver Breath” and “Never-Wears-Bra,” and their speech is about as broken as you’d imagine. Taylor Lautner shamelessly plays a mentally retarded man with a chromosome count to rival Simple Jack. Schneider puts on a really bad Mexican accent and loves his constantly shitting burro. And, perhaps most egregiously, a bunch of executives in a boardroom signed off on featuring this on the biggest streaming service in the world. Pretty much all the gags see our heroes groping women in public, getting poo in their faces, or talking about Lautner’s third nipple. Comedy this lazy is a rarity, with blunt wit that makes the mental root canal that was KUNG FURY look like a masterpiece.
Reviewing THE RIDICULOUS 6 presents the same challenge as AMERICAN ULTRA: it’s broken in every way conceivable. I could go on about how I’ve demonstrated better camerawork with my iPhone behind a Denny’s at four in the morning, or that the experience is about as humorous as a readthrough of the Book of Job, but there only are so many ways in the English language to say “it sucks.” If you’re an alien overlord looking for an excuse to test out your new plasma obliterator out on Earth and/or really need to see Vanilla Ice dance around awkwardly in a Mark Twain costume, go see THE RIDICULOUS 6. For anyone else, I’d recommend getting waterboarded instead.
Verdict: Do Not Recommend
Ed Dutcher
Ed Dutcher is the Video Games Editor here at Crossfader. The last time Ed had a meal that wasn't microwaved, George W. Bush was president. He only learned to read so that he could play Pokemon.
