Review: The Ridiculous Six is funny but stupid

WARNING: This is an Adam Sandler movie so it’s pretty stupid silly. Adam Sandler plays a white Native American, (I didn’t typo that as he’s a white guy raised by Native Americans), named Tommy “White Knife” Stockburn. My first reaction was dislike for the movie based on the premise alone but then I started over and set my expectations to nothing and tried let myself have fun with this movie. It sort of worked.

The movie starts off by letting you know that there’s going to be some ridiculous gags in the film with the opening entailing White Knife’s first encounter with The Left Eye Gang which was hilariously led by Will Forte. Essentially they’re a bunch of guys who decided to be a gang with a shtick and all gouged out their right eyes. They wear eye patches and only use their left eyes which is absolutely as silly as it sounds. We see Sandler’s first interaction with the gang and at first I couldn’t stand Sandler’s Batman like raspy voice. In fact Sandler’s voice downright annoyed the hell out of me and made me feel like he just wasn’t putting in too much of an effort into this movie.

The film moves along and Sandler’s long lost biological father showing up and wanting to reconnect with his long lost son. Sounds neat. I’m not all that sure how he tracked down and found his long lost kid after 30 some odd years but but the movie doesn’t make much of an effort to make sense and neither should you. Regardless Frank Stockurn, (Nick Nolte), locates his son and gives him the heads up that he’s dying which is what inspired this little get together. One of the last things ol poppa Stockburn wants to do before biting the bullet is reconnect and share a fortune that he’s buried somewhere for his son. Fate has it that his dad’s old gang was robbed of said gift money and comes looking to reclaim their lost fortunes. They decide to take dad who promises to show them where the loot is hidden and White Knife sets out to save his father rather than leaving him to his fate. Things get even sillier from here because Sandler has some siblings that he meets along the way that are anything but predictable.

At some point I noticed something I haven’t seen in an Adam Sandler movie in a good long while. It actually looked like Sandler was having fun. There’s a little smirk or something, that rarely happens in his more recent films, where you can tell he’s trying to hold back laughter and it’s in those movies he usually puts out his best stuff. I noticed that more than once in this movie and it rang true. There’s some truly laugh out loud moments in TR6 that Sandler outright contributed to especially with Jorge Garcia. His dimwitted non-speaking silly character has some really funny ass moments in this movie and I liked every moment of him on screen after his introduction.

The movie has a silly story and for the most part is completely predictable, if not terrible, but I guess this is one of those instances where the journey is worth more than the destination because the ending can be seen coming a mile away. The fun is found in the introductions for all of White Knifes half-brothers is like playing spin the bottle as you have no idea what kind of character the next brother will be and they’re all completely different. Terry Crews, Jorge Garcia, Rob Schneider, Taylor Lautner and Luke Wilson are not names that one would associate with ‘relatives’ but it’s nice to see Sandler finally get away from some of his normal go to guys and team with some other folks who can be funny  to make up this ensemble. Some of his faithful friends pop up from time to time but it’s good that this movie switches things up a bit.

Overall I thought the movie was cute. Maybe I enjoyed it more because it was included with my Netflix subscription and didn’t force me to leave the house or fork over more money. Maybe. I wouldn’t call this movie the triumphant return of Adam Sandler but it is a film that points him in the right direction. Smaller budgets and a bigger effort on gags is what I want to see. Maybe someday Sandler may be able to carry a movie by himself again, without the need of other comics. Either way the Ridiculous 6 is worth a viewing or two.

 

 

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