Ridiculously Bad
Directed by: Frank Coraci
“Written” by: Tim Herlihy, Adam Sandler
Starring: Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Luke Wilson, Taylor Lautner, Terry Crews, Jorge Garcia, Nick Nolte
The H-Bomb: Having been an avid moviegoer for the bulk of my 34 years on this planet, I can say, with confidence, that the most painful kind of bad movie is a bad comedy. When a horror movie is bad, it can be funny. When an action movie is bad, it can also be funny. When a drama is bad, it too, can be funny. Bad comedies are, by definition, not funny. Their primary purpose is to make us laugh, or at the very least, make us feel amused. When a comedy can’t manage to make us do either, then it is a failure.
The Ridiculous 6, the latest offering from the comedy crap factory that is Happy Madison, is a massive, colossal, gargantuan failure. It’s best if I just cut to the chase on that point, because the sooner I finish this review and purge this steaming cow pie from my mind, the better. Now, I am no snob when it comes to comedies, as I can enjoy them in just about any form, be they high brow, low brow, slapstick, raunchy, romantic… so long as there’s actual wit and humor on hand. Sadly, there is absolutely no wit or humor to be found anywhere in this double-barreled blast from the ass. I wasn’t expecting a miracle here, given Adam Sandler’s recent track record, but I figured it couldn’t be any worse than Seth MacFarlane’s insufferable A Million Ways to Die in the West. I figured wrong… dead fucking wrong.
The Ridiculous 6, a title that I’m supposing is meant to spoof either The Magnificent Seven or Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming The Hateful Eight, is a Netflix Original Movie, and it can be streamed there for free… should you dare. Even if you do manage to endure all two hours of this movie’s non-stop barrage of brain numbingly bad humor, by the end of it, you will feel as though you wasted a lot more than just your time, that I guaran-damn-tee. You will not laugh once. You will not even smile once. You will, however, have to resist the overwhelming urge to sock Taylor Lautner in his toothy fucking face, for giving what has to be the worst comedic performance I have seen since James Franco shat all over The Interview.
Okay, I am getting a bit ahead of myself. The story of The Ridiculous 6, by Sandler and his frequent cohort Tim Herlihy, is barely worth rehashing. Back in the days of the Old West, Tommy (Sandler), a white man raised by Native Americans, is approached by one Frank Stockburn (Nick Nolte), a grizzled old outlaw and Tommy’s alleged birth father. Apparently, old Frank is dying, and wishes to atone for his wayward life. So, he tells Tommy about a large stash of loot that he buried near the “Singing Windmill,” or some such thing. Soon after, Frank is abducted by a gang of outlaws, led by the ever ugly Danny Trejo.
Feeling it’s his duty to rescue his father, Tommy goes about raising the money to buy his freedom by… well, stealing it. But he’s only stealing from outlaws, mind you, not honest folk (our hero must remain heroic, even in a whack-ass junker of a film like this). It’s while under-taking this arduous task that Tommy learns what a busy little beaver his father Frank used to be, when he encounters five men who are his half-brothers. They include a mentally challenged Mexican (Rob Schneider), a mentally challenged moonshiner (Jorge Garcia), a mentally challenged farm boy (Taylor Lautner), a drunkard (Luke Wilson), who is mentally challenged due to excessive drinking, and a mentally challenged piano player (Terry Crews) who harbors a dark secret… he’s black. Sorry if I spoiled that oh-so-brilliant joke for you.
You may have noticed a pattern among these guys, that whether by design (Lautner, Garcia), or by the sheer ineptitude of the writing/performances (Schneider), they are all mentally special. Upon learning that they’re all brothers, they decide to team up with Tommy, thus becoming The Ridiculous Six. Now, they all set about obtaining the money to free their deadbeat daddy, be it by stealing a gigantic gold nugget from a deranged Harvey Keitel, or robbing a poker game with Mark Twain (played by… wait for it… Vanilla fucking Ice). All the while, they have a pack of angry, one-eyed bandits hot on their trail.
Much like the aforementioned Million Ways to Die in the West, The Ridiculous 6 boasts a decent sized budget and a large cast of recognizable actors in large and small roles. And it just goes to show, all of that means absolute jack shit when you don’t have a script worth a good goddamn. Seriously, when your funniest joke involves a burro spraying diarrhea all over a barn door whenever it’s happy, you should fucking know that your script is dog shit, and is absolutely not worth making into a film.
As if the copious shit gags aren’t enough, there’s also the “edgy” racial humor that crops up throughout, with the aforementioned Terry Crews having to tell people he’s black joke, and the casting of Rob “shit-head” Schneider as a Mexican. The film also tries to push the PC envelope by giving the female Native American characters names like Smoking Fox and Never Wears Bra… if reading that doesn’t make you laugh, then neither will hearing it in the film. And if reading that did make you laugh, then please, seriously consider having yourself lobotomized. Apparently, some Native American extras were so disgusted with the “humor,” that they walked off the set. Trust me, this movie is not worth getting that upset over.
If there’s anything about The Ridiculous 6 that actually offended me, it was how it managed to coral all these famous (and usually good) actors into such an obvious ass turd of a motion picture. I mean, Nick Nolte, and Harvey Keitel, and John Turturro, and Steve Buscemi… holy shit, why??!! These guys have worked with Sandler in the past, but surely they didn’t owe him that big a favor. The worst of the lot has to be Lautner, as the simpleton farm boy with the big white teeth. Tropic Thunder warned us never to go full retard… well, Lautner went full fucking retard, making John Malkovich’s turn as Lennie in Of Mice and Men seem subtle. As if Twilight wasn’t embarrassing enough for this young actor, he had to go and do this. It is the work that Razzies are made of.
As God awful as Lautner is, he at least seems to be more committed than Sandler, who puts on a variation of his Little Nicky voice for his character and plays him completely straight. Yes, Sandler writes a comedy for himself, and puts himself in the straight man role. Normally, it would be an interesting change up, but Sandler’s performance is just boring. The Ridiculous 6, as a whole, is just fucking boring. As far as movies go, there is truly nothing more painful than sitting through an unfunny comedy, and The Ridiculous 6 is about as unfunny as a comedy can get. At 90 minutes, it would have been an ordeal to sit through. At two hours, it is fucking unbearable. Yes, you could see this for free on Netflix, but that really doesn’t mean that you should.
