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| Sometimes the joke is in the title. |
Directed by Steven Brill
Produced by Adam Sandler, Allen Covert, Kevin Grady, Ted Sarandos
Written by Kevin Barnett, Chris Pappa
Starring Adam Sandler, David Spade, Paula Patton
Budget: $Corona
Adam Sandler plays a middle-aged womanizer who, with the help of one of his old friends, engages in all sorts of shenanigans in a vacation spot, scams people out of their money, lies about his identity in order to seduce women, executes a variety of bodily function, gay panic, and cultural difference jokes, and ultimately resorts to exaggerated sentimentality to pretend there's some sort of heart to the movie.
This time the vacation spot is Puerto Rico, the women are Paula Patton, Catherine Bell, and Kathryn Hahn, the gay panic is surprisingly subdued (if still present) and the rest is cancer.
No, literally. This movie is about finding the cure for cancer.
We start off on the wrong foot at a 1991 class reunion where they play I'm Too Sexy and Baby Got Back while watching Sean Astin and Natasha Leggero grind on the dance floor. We're introduced to David Spade, a pathetic bank manager who wishes he'd done things differently. In comes Adam Sandler, a supposed FBI agent who offers to liven up his life. After an explosive trip on a rented yacht, the two steal the identities of some recently-deceased, go to Puerto Rico, and engage in all sorts of nonsense as the movie changes genres in between scenes and ultimately loses itself in the shift.
At this point it's become abundantly clear that Sandler pretty much makes movies so he can dick around with his buddies and take free vacations, and who can blame him? The guy consistently draws an audience, and with Netflix behind him he doesn't have to give a damn about the quality so long as he delivers the face-time to pull in those sweet, sweet views. Ultimately The Do-Over is more of the same.
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| Get it? His name is Max. Like Maxi-Pad. It's a joke! |
The plot summary above is exaggerated for the sake, but not by much. Spade's bank manager character gets dragged along by Sandler on a variety of misadventures which are all ultimately at the service of delivering a "magic bullet" cure for cancer for Sandler's kid. Which would work, but it takes the movie (about 110 minutes long) roughly 90 minutes to get there, where it's all delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Focusing on Sandler here would just be to copy and paste my other posts about him, so I'll focus on the others in the film. First off, Spade puts in a passable performance as a mild-mannered bank manager (inside a grocery store so we can get dat sweet product placement), but the writing piles it on just a bit too heavily. There's a fine balance that needs to be maintained so we can both empathize with this guy who's been stepped on his entire life while also feeling like he's not the one who's allowed it all to happen. Considering the introductory scene for Spade's character involves him watching his wife (Leggero) grind on her ex-husband (Astin), then go home with him (with his "permission") it's kind of hard to like this massive push-over.
Skip to his home life where he's helping raise his wife's verbally and physically abusive twin boys (who can't keep straight faces during their line deliveries) and most of my sympathy has crawled into the corner and died.
They take on the identities of two doctors, one of whom was married to Paula Patton who puts on a fine performance, go down to Puerto Rico, and discover that their assumed identities were embroiled in some sort of crime which involves gay bikers, a German assassin called the Gymnast, and Sandler's ex-wife (Hahn) who chases him around so they can have comically loud sex scenes off-camera.
Then we get the whammy. As we're introduced to an increasingly-expansive web of characters Spade goes to investigate a convenient exposition computer and discovers that these doctors had discovered an incredibly effective cancer treatment, were shot down by Big Pharma, and were murdered by people who wanted money. Oh, and Paula Patton was a bad guy.
The Acceptable
There are some fine performances in this. Paula Patton does her best with what she's given, despite the fact that most of her script calls for the sort of wide-eyed innocence which is really easy to mistake for bad acting. Natasha Leggero is doing her standard spoiled girl routine, which is generally at least believable. Nick Swardson has a few scenes which primarily consist of him getting hit by cars which is incredibly satisfying.
Special mention in particular should go to Sean Astin who is unrecognizable as Ted-O. He must have been having a blast.
Shockingly, I actually liked Sandler's first...ten minutes? When he shows up as an FBI agent (a lie) he does a little monologue about growing up without his dad, which is actually delivered with some sincerity in the performance. It reminded me of Click and made me wonder if Sandler doesn't have some serious father issues he pulls from. Maybe he should do that more often.
At least Rob Schneider doesn't show up.
The Rest
This movie is nearly two hours long, and Sandler's character lies throughout, to the point where it's not until the last twenty minutes that we learn exactly what's been going on (after which it's helpfully spelled out with roughly half a dozen flashbacks). In a better movie these clues would have been a little more subtle and less easily interpreted as mistakes in the script, but that's the world we live in. It's a moment of such forced sentimentality that it outstrips pretty much any other attempt Sandler's done to pluck at our heartstrings. There's only so much they can take before they snap.
It's also interesting to see Sandler take advantage of the freedom he's afforded by Netflix concerning content. Early on there's some jokes about Spade peeking on Sandler's mom in the shower (he refers to Spade as her little Macaulay Culkin), there's a fairly visible shot of Luis Guzman's scrotum, and plenty of the mean-spirited references to homosexuality that you've come to expect from this crew.
Unlike Pixels the production on this movie is fairly bland. The direction doesn't do anything special, most of the look comes from Puerto Rico's natural beauty, and the score doesn't really exist beyond the obvious nostalgia picks. There's a single strain of actual score which stood out to me, primarily because it sounded eerily similar to me, to the point where I spent a long while digging into the composer's background. Ultimately it turns out the movie was scored by long-time Sandler collaborator Rupert Gregson-Williams, who's done most of his previous entries. So maybe he just ripped himself off.
Finally, there is a huge missed opportunity here. Throughout there are jokes made about Spade's character wishing he'd invented time travel. Combined with the title, I was desperately hoping that there would be a third-act twist where it turns out he did and that comes into the plot somehow. Alas, it goes wasted.
The Products
I've been surprised by recent Sandler movies as to the lack of obvious product placement, but it returned with a vengeance in this one. Here's a short list of the stuff I noticed, and I wasn't paying particularly close attention:
Corona (multiple), Acer (1/3 of entire screen), Bud Light Party Ball (focal point of scene), "Sun Daze" by Florida Georgia Line, Diet Coke, Amex, Ramen, Hamburger Helper, Zenith, Netflix (excusable, I guess), Jenga, Ferrari, Jameson, Fritos. I'm not against product placement because it does its part in helping a movie get made. But when the center 60% of the screen is taken up by it and the dialogue in the scene revolves around it, that's when I get tired of having low-tier beer shoved at my face.
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| Not like that's saying much. |
While I wouldn't recommend it, at least it's better than Ridiculous 6...
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