THE RIDICULOUS 6 - REVIEW

Adam Sandler stars in, produces and writes this Western comedy which was released straight to Netflix last year and, though it did really well on the online platform, it was somehow given worse reviews than Sandler's other 2015 effort Pixels.

The Ridiculous 6 goes for a kind of Happy Madison version of Blazing Saddles crossed with The Magnificent Seven as Sandler's orphan-turned-Native American-turned-cowboy goes on a journey to raise enough money to save his kidnapped estranged father (Nick Nolte) and, on the way, meets 5 of his half-brothers who all agree to help out. Each of them has their own ludicrous story and their own reasons to find their father, which gives the film a weird Wizard Of Oz vibe. Speaking of weird, you can expect quite a few surprises from this movie including Rob Schneider playing a Mexican dude, Vanilla Ice as Mark Twain, a character called Never Wears Bra, Taylor Lautner going all-out as a mentally challenged yokel and Steve Buscemi doing ungodly things with ointment.

The cast also includes Terry Crews, Jorge Garcia, Luke Wilson, Will Forte, Steve Zahn, Danny Trejo, Harvey Keitel and extended cameos from Jon Lovitz and David Spade. Oh, there's also a completely useless and not very funny John Turturro scene in there somewhere but let's just act like that didn't happen. Overall, though, this is a pretty big cast and that alone makes The Ridiculous 6 entertaining. Yes, the film has its share of flaws, that goes without saying: white people playing Native Americans, Rob Schneider, the fact it's much, much too long, the stupidly predictable twist, Adam Sandler's auto-pilot performance, a good bunch of jokes that fall flat and the misguided idea that a singalong is at all necessary.

Besides, why even try to outdo the classic singalong from The Three Amigos?

It's just not gonna happen.

Having said all that, I do think critics were unfairly harsh on this one. I mean, I get that Adam Sandler's schtick is wearing thin but The Ridiculous 6 is in no way worse than Pixels or his worst film or even the worst comedy of last year, a year which gave us both Vacation and Get Hard. Visually, the film looks good and you can tell some dough was definitely sunk into it, plus there's a genuine effort there to do what A Million Ways To Die In The West failed to do and bring back the Western comedy subgenre. The film itself is dumb and patchy jokes-wise, for sure, but it's an amusing, silly romp which does have its moments. Harvey Keitel's villain gets an inventive death scene and the whole cast seems to be having fun. Had the film been half-an-hour shorter and all the pointless crap had been edited out of it, I think it would have been much better received.

While I can't exactly recommend The Ridiculous 6 and justify you go run to Netflix to check it out, I can say, however, that if you do it most definitely won't be the worst time you ever spend watching a movie, despite the vastly negative feedback Sandler's latest got.

Watchable ridiculous fare.