In April, during the New Mexico location filming of the Adam Sandler Western spoof “The Ridiculous 6,” several Native American performers walked off the set, citing demeaning stereotypes deployed in the name of lowbrow comedy. The completed film made its streaming debut Friday as a Netflix Original Movie offering. Two questions straight off: How is it in the offensiveness department? And does it earn any cheap laughs in spite of itself?
Answers: moderately offensive, and a handful.
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Based on set reports last spring, various lines and bits in the script never made it to the final cut, including a scene in which an Apache woman, passed out from drinking, is roused when jeering men slosh liquor on her face. Take heart, however. An unsavory supporting character in the final cut refers to the Sandler character’s bride-to-be, whose name is Smoking Fox (played by Julia Jones), as a “sweet piece of red prairie meat.” He is summarily punished for saying such things, because that’s how it works in an Sandler comedy. Leering one-liners, followed by convenient apologies for the cheap shot.
On the other hand, strange as it seems, if you choose to set aside the female roles in “The Ridiculous 6” reducing women to cleavage or to mute humiliation, the movie is a long, long way from the worst Sandler movie ever made.
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That’s right. It’s less painful than “Blended,” or “That’s My Boy,” or “Jack and Jill,” or “Just Go With It.” Even with Rob Schneider playing the Mexican half-brother of Sandler’s Apache-raised that’s-my-white-boy, whose adopted name is White Knife and whose birth name is Tommy.
The plot of “The Ridiculous 6” collects all the sons of a craggy old thief (Nick Nolte) together on a mission to save the dying man. Screenwriters Sandler and Tim Herlihy attempt to position their extended “Injun” jokes as jokes about racism, rather than culturally acceptable means of embodying racism. To wit: a bug-eyed Jack Elam-type varmint (Steve Zahn) has a sign reading “maize munchers shot on sight” outside his cabin. That’s one approach. Later, a decorative “squaw” (played by Sandler’s wife, Jackie) stretches in the early morning sun, as White Knife offers a deadpan: “Good morning, Wears-No-Bra.” The trick, Sandler seems to be saying, is to look sheepish while delivering such a line. At its worst, “The Ridiculous 6” plays the Donald Trump card of sneering at political correctness in one scene, and then make amends for being a jerk in the next. This is a sensitive offensive comedy about multiracial togetherness, at least among men.
The director is veteran Sandler hack Frank Coraci (“Blended,” “Click” and, in better days, “The Wedding Singer”). The good jokes include a bizarrely inspired non-sequitur in which Abner Doubleday, hammed up delightfully by John Turturro, conducts the first-ever game of baseball with a batch of faceless, bumbling Chinese immigrants and Sandler and crew. Vanilla Ice turns up as Mark Twain. As counterpoint to the forthcoming Quentin Tarantino splatterfest “The Hateful 8” and its 70mm widescreen format, when the title of the Sandler vehicle first hits the screen it’s accompanied by a digital in-joke: “Presented in 4k.”
Phillips is a Tribune Newspapers critic.
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“Ridiculous 6” – 1 1/2
No MPAA rating (violence, language, sexual material)
Running time: 1:59
Now streaming on Netflix.
Source: https://t-tees.com
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