The Ridiculous 6 (2015)

Today on Movie Russian Roulette, Alex watches Adam Sandler desperately try to stay relevant.

Netflix, what have you done?

Overview: Tommy "White Knife" is a badass warrior raised by Apaches. All is well in his life, as he's about to marry his Apache girlfriend Smoking Fox (seriously), but then complications arise! His father, an affable former bandit, arrives seeking to patch things up with his son and give him the small fortune he's tucked away to make amends for his life a crime. The dad's former gang spirits him away, and with help from a quote-unquote "zany" cast of characters who all happen to be his half-brothers, Tommy sets off to get their dad back.

Notable moments/quotes: Sandler, deadpan, to shopkeep: "Need some flour. Five sacks. And a carrot with some peanut butter on it."

Bandit, to Smoking Fox: "You partial to pale faces, Poca-hot-tits?"

Bandit who just witnessed the below: "What the shit that just happened?"

Yes, that is Adam Sandler using terrible special effects to handstand bum rush some banditos.

Unimportant character, to Sandler: "You suck, mister!"

Native chief: "Sometimes, the white man speaks truth. Like, 1 in 20, 25 times."

Tommy, to babe: "Morning, Never Wears Bra."

Tommy's Mexican half-brother, in response to the below: "That means he likes you."

Yes, that is a burro CGI sharting all over a wall.

Half-brother whose personality is "village idiot:" "I'm a virgin too, unless ya count canty-lopes."
Half-brother whose personality is Mexican: "I believe that."

Bandit, to Native babe: "Whachu goan do abou it, beaver breath?"
Babe: "How you know my name?"

Quote that is better without context: "Okay ladies, take yer clothes off and start punching me in the face! Hallelujah!"

In what is meant to be a funny bit, the brothers encounter Abner Doubleday and help him with the first baseball game. The bit is not funny.

In what is meant to be a funny bit, the brothers hold up a poker game attended by General Custer and Mark Twain. The bit is not funny.

In what is meant to be a funny bit, a man who would foil a theft by the brothers is knocked out by the burro's CGI shit cannon.

The bit is not funny.

 Lawman, to Mark Twain: I finally read Prince & the Pauper. I didn't get it."
Twain: "Fo reals?"

To infiltrate the camp where the poker game is taking place, Tommy murmurs some Apache things and somehow turns himself into a tumbleweed for a few seconds. As with every time the main character uses his poorly set up and explained "powers," all the movie has to say is, "That is some mystical shit."

My thoughts: So... there's a common saying that states you can't judge a book by its cover. In this case, however, you can.

Ridiculous, yes. Funny? Well...

The moment I saw this movie was going to exist, I muttered to myself, "Oh, that looks terrible. And not garden-variety terrible. Better save that for a rainy blog day." WELL, SAID DAY HAS ARRIVED.

This movie reminds me a lot of two movies that I somehow liked at the time: Year One and Your Highness. (You develop a taste for terrible movies in this business. Sue me.) All three movies have the same schtick: use a recognizable setting (Biblical-ish history, stock swords-and-sorcery world, the Old West), and add your "humorous" twist by inserting modern slang and curses. That's it. That's all these movies have for jokes. It gets old quickly.

While this movie tries to paint itself as some kind of parody of westerns during its initial five to ten minutes or so, it quickly drops that pretext, as nearly every character begins talking like a modern-day person through the power of lazy writing. The dialogue samples provided above should give you a pretty good idea what the lines sound like.

Okay, so the setting is off and the plot sounds cliche, but what about the characters? Surely Sandler and co. have some hilarious characters for us, right?

A visual summary.

Each character is a broad stereotype, possessing only one (or if they got ambitious, two) personality traits. Tommy is the wise, solemn, ass-kicking Indian stand-in. One brother is Mexican (yes, the movie thinks this is a personality trait, but goddamn Rob Schneider is sadly about the only one trying in this movie). One brother is a village idiot, another is a crazy mountain man, one is black, and one has no personality traits whatsoever. Seriously, I'm trying to continue the bit, but two of the brothers come in halfway through the movie with almost no introduction, and the one that isn't black barely registers onscreen as a human being so much as he does a human-shaped thing in a cowboy hat. I'd mention his name, but I'm fairly convinced it was never mentioned.

And that brings me to the main problem here: the movie is overcrowded. There were a few moments early on where I thought that the premise was going to work (albeit badly) with Sandler as the straight man and the others providing something that passed to my increasingly desperate brain as jokes, but then they'd throw in another brother to the band seemingly as an afterthought. And in a movie that's 2 agonizing hours, you should be able to develop six characters at least a little bit. Hell, one of the bad guys has more personality than the band combined, and he was just the throwaway shopkeep at the beginning! He's not even important to the movie!

The movie also treads into dangerous ground by having its village idiot character explain most of the jokes. Just in case you couldn't grasp their subtle, nuanced-

Riiiiiiight.

I will admit the movie has a few moments where it rises to be, if not exactly funny, something approximating that. A midmovie heist on a famous bar had a great setup to it, showing the characters bumbling through the op Boondock Saints style, and for a few moments, I was nodding and thinking, okay, now we're getting to the worthwhile bit.

Then the movie has the characters stop for about five minutes and laugh as one of their own imitates a man stuttering about, still firing his guns after having his head chopped off by a shovel. It breaks the heist feel and instantly reminds the viewer, "Don't forget, you're watching this shit! Your Netflix subscription paid for this!" Through its sheer length,

the scene loses its charm. I mean, I'm fine with gallows humor, but this is like, grade school level gallows. I'm pretty sure I heard better ones in the sixth grade.

In the end, the only thing the movie really does right is not having Sandler try to be funny. He's the straight man here, and while that's irritating at first, it lets other, better performers try to save this film.

Like this guy! Oh god, not this guy.

In the end, this movie might be funny to a fan of westerns who had never heard of the words "parody" or "satire" before, but to most it's just going to be awful. Even writing this blog post hurt.

I give this movie a Nic Cage Talks About Not Being a Vampire out of ten. Face the books and Patreon joke!