It’s not really news anymore when Adam Sandler makes a bad movie. But maybe it’s noteworthy that he seems to be making bad movies at a faster clip than ever before. Less than a year after the universally panned “Pixels” and six months after the idiotic Western spoof “The Ridiculous 6,” he’s back with “The Do-Over.”
Like “The Ridiculous 6,” “The Do-Over” is part of Sandler’s multi-movie deal with Netflix, so subscribers could stream it immediately upon its Friday release. The good news is no one wasted money on a ticket to see the comedy in a theater.
Sandler re-teams with fellow “Saturday Night Live” alum David Spade for this latest outing. Both, during their heyday a couple of decades ago, were very funny, especially when they were sharing screen time with Chris Farley. And maybe their history makes the agony of this movie all the more acute. It’s hard to watch and not think: What happened to these guys?
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The movie is yet another example of Sandler’s moldy bread and butter: men lamenting their adulthood and acting out against societal dictates to grow up. Spade plays Charlie, a middle-aged square who still lives in his childhood home and works at a bank inside a supermarket. He’s married to a selfish harpy and lives with her twin teenage sons, who abuse him.
Share this articleShare“I wish I could start from scratch and get it right this time,” Charlie laments to a childhood friend at their high school reunion. But he picked the wrong guy to complain to. Max (played by Sandler) — or “Maxi-Pad,” as he likes to refer to himself — is like a demented genie in a bottle, and he grants his friend’s booze-fueled wish.
During a boating trip, Max drugs Charlie then crafts a plan to fake their deaths and assume the identities of two recently deceased men. When Charlie wakes up, he’s no longer a pleated khaki-sporting nobody. He’s Dr. Ronny Fishman and Max is Butch Ryder, a shady dude with a safety deposit box full of cash and a mansion in Puerto Rico.
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Needless to say, pretending to be people with hidden stashes of money is a bad idea, and trouble comes calling almost immediately. Thus “The Do-Over,” which was directed with fleeting hints of finesse by Steven Brill, transitions into an action comedy. (Brill, by the way, directed some of the worst Sandler movies, including “Mr. Deeds” and “Little Nicky.”)
The movie relies heavily on shocking sight gags, and that’s probably its greatest undoing. After so many comedies that revel in gross-out humor, audiences have become nearly immune to hysteria. We’ve seen unfortunate incidents with zipper flies and we’ve seen puppets getting kinky; we’ve seen guys seduce apple pies, for god’s sake. What could possibly make us gasp in wide-eyed wonder? (Please don’t try to answer that.)
What’s odd is that screenwriters Kevin Barnett and Chris Pappas only make a half-hearted go at it, serving up icky scenes we’ve seen before. An elderly woman’s topless form? That’s a lot like “There’s Something About Mary.” A testicular close-up? “Neighbors 2” just barely beat Netflix to the punch. There’s also a basement torture scene reminiscent of “Pulp Fiction” and a tongue piercing gag that was funnier in “Rat Race,” of all movies. A joke about teen boys and masturbation was much funnier in “Bridesmaids,” when it was implied rather than shown.
It’s all so derivative. What’s strangest is Sandler clearly puts in a lot of hours on the job. He’s working hard to look so lazy.
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