I was about halfway through Adam Sandler’s new Netflix movie, The Ridiculous 6, when I realized that I hadn’t laughed. I had sighed, grunted, and said, “What?” out loud, but I wasn’t laughing.
This lasted for another hour until The Ridiculous 6, an utterly terrible attempt to parody the western, was over. That’s right, this movie was two hours of poop-centric, racist, misogynistic, and historically inaccurate jokes that your teenager might enjoy if they’ve only ever watched other Happy Madison movies because they are really a sub genre all to themselves.
The Ridiculous 6 follows six brothers from different mothers (Sandler, Rob Schneider, Taylor Lautner, Jorge Garcia, Luke Wilson, and Terry Crews) who have never met, but decide to team-up to save their long-lost dad (Nick Nolte) from his former partner in crime (Danny Trejo) by robbing “bad people” to get the $50,000 needed to save him.
I have reviewed such classics as Zombeavers and A Deadly Adoption, so I’m not anti-stupid movie, but those movies featured some fun along with their stupidity. The Ridiculous 6 has no redeeming qualities; it’s boring, ugly, misogynistic, and completely pointless. I’m not going to bore you with a thousand words that basically are just different ways for me to say, “It stinks,” so here are examples of why I hated The Ridiculous 6 so much:
Racist Humor
A lot was written about the Native American actors who walked off the set in disgust over the racially insensitive and stereotypical script. The producers and Netflix tried to claim that the movie was a “broad satire” of Westerns, and fans of the film have told those of us who find it insensitive that it’s just like another satire of Westerns, the Mel Brooks classic, Blazing Saddles.
The problem with that comparison is that a lot of the racially charged humor in Blazing Saddles is used to show just how racist white people can be when someone of color, in this case Cleavon Little’s Sheriff Bart, assumes a role of authority. The Ridiculous 6, in its attempt to “make fun of everyone,” just names characters Beaver Breath, Smoking Fox, and Wears No Bra, or has Sandler’s character (who is white, but raised by Native Americans) perform “mystical shit.” There’s no thought behind the racial humor; it’s dumb and lazy.
Vanilla Ice as Mark Twain
Mark Twain was the greatest humorist of his age and wrote classic American literature. Vanilla Ice stole a beat from Queen before starring in Cool As Ice. Obviously, this makes Ice the perfect fit to be Twain. To be fair, my issue isn’t so much with the casting of Ice as Twain. It’s the fact that Ice doesn’t even try to be anything other than Vanilla Ice with white hair. Ice’s acting and performance is easily the worst part of The Ridiculous 6, and in a movie this bad that’s really saying something. Also, Ice tried to claim he had Choctaw heritage to support Sandler, but his claim was later debunked by Indian Country Today Media Network.
Historical Inaccuracies
Two of the movie’s most glaring historical inaccuracies center around baseball and a poker game. While the brothers are between robberies, they run into Abner Doubleday (John Turturro) attempting to teach a group of Chinese laborers a new ball game. The brothers agree to help Doubleday with his demonstration because he has information about their father and in the process, create new rules for baseball. In 1905, the Mills Commission was formed to determine if baseball was American in origin, and started the legend that Doubleday created the game in Cooperstown, N.Y. in 1839. But there has never been any concrete evidence linking Doubleday to baseball’s creation, and most baseball historians now agree that the sport evolved from ball games popular in England.
John Turturro as Abner Doubleday in The Ridiculous 6
After the brothers have their $50,000 stolen by the Left Eye Gang, they decide to sneak into a high stakes poker game held by Ezekiel Grant (Jon Lovitz) that includes Twain, General George Custer (David Spade), and Wyatt Earp (Blake Shelton). According to a flashback, Luke Wilson’s character was a bodyguard in Ford’s Theatre when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, while Custer’s demise at the Battle of Little Bighorn took place in 1876, so this poker match (and therefore the movie) must’ve been set in-between these dates. Except Earp tells Twain he just read The Prince and the Pauper which wasn’t published until 1881, and Earp is referred to as their “friend from Tombstone,” even though the lawman didn’t move there until 1879. Maybe it’s Custer’s ghost?
Obviously, I shouldn’t have expected a movie from the same studio as Jack and Jill, Bucky Larson, and Joe Dirt to be worried about historical accuracy, but they could have tried. There’s this wonderful thing called the Internet (aka, the World Wide Web) full of this information.
Will Forte
Oh, Will Forte. I weep for you. You cap off an amazing year of Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for your hilarious sitcom, The Last Man on Earth, by appearing in this craptastic waste of time. I understand picking up a paycheck, and hanging out with friends (which is most likely why Turturro, Harvey Keitel, and Steve Buscemi keep appearing in Sandler movies), but sometimes money and friends aren’t worth the 0% on Rotten Tomatoes that will always be connected to your name.
The Ridiculous 6 is unfortunately only the first of four movies in the deal Netflix signed with Happy Madison. The second movie, The Do-Over, starring Sandler, Spade, and Paula Patton should be out sometime next year. Netflix stood by Sandler during the controversial filming of The Ridiculous 6, but after a year that saw the streaming site garner 34 Emmy nominations, along with the success of its partnership with Marvel, the company may need to reevaluate its biggest misstep to date if The Do-Over is another movie in a string of bad ones for Sandler.
