Has a movie star ever done less on screen than Sandler in
any of his recent lackadaisical performances where he’s little more than a
black hole of energy and appeal? Maybe, even after years of scraping near the
bottom of the barrel with the dire likes of Grown
Ups 2 and Blended, it was
combined impact of the relative box office disappointment of his hard-R, but
twisted funny, That’s My Boy in 2012 and
the bad luck to stretch dramatic chops in two total flops, 2014’s Men Women & Children and 2015’s The Cobbler, that pushed him to do less
than the bare minimum. Since then he’s slept through an action comedy (Pixels) and a western
parody (The Ridiculous 6), each worse
than the last. And each time around he fades under the spotlight, committing
less and less to silly voices or high-concept goofiness. He lets the supporting players and desperate
flop-sweat gross out gags do the heavy lifting while he appears to look forward
to the next time the director calls cut so he can get on with his life.
I dutifully fired up Netflix to sample The Do-Over, the streaming service’s second film from a four-picture
deal with Sandler. (Creatively it’s their worst original programming move, but
since they keep the numbers secret there’s no telling if it pays off financially.)
I quickly found that any attempt to write about it would be putting more
thought and effort into it than anyone involved did. The story concerns two
unlucky dopes (Sandler, sleepwalking, and David Spade, playing against type as
a timid dummy instead of a sarcastic dummy) who fake their deaths to escape
their miserable lives only to discover the plan goes awry when they end up in a
conspiracy involving cancer drugs. If you think it sounds a bit more
complicated than the typical Sandler material, you’d be mistaken. It’s a collection of dumb complications, sloppily
plotted, lazily performed, and shot with all the flat visual interest of a stock
photo with the watermark still attached. What would be worse: if Sandler has
stopped trying, or if this is really the best he can do?
Why does it exist? Is it for the product placement, logos
for cell phones and beers and others in a parade of brands prominently
displayed? Is it to get attractive women, extras and featured performers (like Paula
Patton) alike, in tight dresses, low-cut shirts, and bikinis? Is it to get
Netflix to bankroll a trip? Long scenes take place on a tropical island, or in
swimming pools, so it’s also another of his paid vacations with a little bit of
a film shoot on the side. He’s brought along a host of his usual pals in front
of the camera (Spade, Nick Swardson) and behind the scenes (director Steven
Brill, veteran of Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds, lackluster comedies that seem
better in retrospect compared to this). It’s such a flaccid, baggy, boring movie, working in cameos
for all sorts of people I just felt sorry for, like Kathryn Hahn, Sean Astin,
Michael Chiklis, and Matt Walsh. I felt worst for the great character actor Luis
Guzmán, who has an embarrassing scene involving sweaty testicles, one of many
desperate R-rated jokes fruitlessly attempting to yank some life into this dud.
And then if you happen to take the story seriously for even
one second, the whole thing is even worse than the lack of laughs and
narrative or visual interest. It’s wrapped in toxic masculinity’s misogynistic
expression, blaming the characters’ misfortunes entirely on women who
exclusively wish to torment, tease, trick, and otherwise torture the men in
their lives. It ends with Spade repeatedly punching a woman in the stomach
while shouting, “I’m sick of women lying to me!” The whole thing’s nothing you
couldn’t get if you asked a dozen of the worst commenters on a shady website to
write a screenplay about how much they feel wronged by women. If out of
perverse curiosity you end up watching this movie you have my condolences. To
review Sandler films is too often an exercise in finding rock bottom move ever
lower.
