And so, this is the first review of this website. Welcome!
In putting together this list, I didn't differentiate between streaming and theatrical movies (and I'm still unclear as to whether people still do). So it's worth noting that, to most guys in prison, this movie doesn't exist. It's a point to which I'll return frequently throughout the history of this site, but for most inmates, particularly in federal prison, basic cable is one of their captors.
Basic cable is the domain of people like Adam Sandler, who seemed to devote his career and production company, Happy Madison, to Netflix around 2015. There's an excellent book by Ben Fritz, "The Big Picture", that details the breakup between Sandler and Sony Pictures that led him to streaming - this was a valuable document, by the way, regarding changes in the industry I largely missed.
Because streaming movies don't play on cable, and because they are barely advertised through conventional means, they might as well not exist to people in prison, who don't have access to said services. The world of streaming felt to prisoners the way the "off-world" attractions feel to the denizens of "Blade Runner". To many of them, Adam Sandler basically died around 2014, leaving behind a collection of hits like "Big Daddy" and "Click" to air in perpetuity on basic cable. And basic cable loves stars. Because of the star system, you're much more likely to surf basic cable on a weekend and see Sandler's 2000 flop "Little Nicky" rather than Disney's "Dinosaur", the fifth highest grossing movie from that same year.
As told in "The Big Picture" and elsewhere, Sandler infamously took the "Ridiculous Six" script to Sony and they rejected it, given the sizable budget and Sandler's declining box office. Now that I've seen it, yes, they were clearly onto something.
You're gonna see a lot from Sandler on this site. It's something of a love hate thing, I guess. Like most people with taste, I find Sandler's movies to be puerile and repetitive, usually offensive in a number of casually ignorant ways. When he gives a real performance you can see talent there. When it is a Happy Madison production, he opts for one of his three stock voices and he tends to let much larger ensembles do the comedic work for him.
That's certainly the case in this film, where he gets to recruit a crew to head on a mission in the wild west. Sandler is a “Saturday Night Live” alum, which means he's a phone call away from some of the funniest people on planet Earth. So who makes up the six?
-Rob Schneider, not one of the funnier SNL graduates, but a frequent collaborator. Despite Schneider's dubious lacking credentials, this makes some sense.
-Terry Crews, another frequent collaborator but also something of a counter-intuitive choice. There's not that much crossover between comedians and Expendables.
-Luke Wilson, which… requires explanation. We're talking a reliable Hollywood utility man with a skill at comedy, but not really the best compliment to Sandler's dick-and-fart material.
-Jorge Garcia, who achieved some fame as part of the ensemble in "Lost" but has never shown much comedic aptitude. Presumably if Netflix was footing the bill, they had to find savings somewhere.
-Finally, Taylor Lautner. No need to belabor the point- Lautner is not a funny person at all. Nobody has ever thought so, no one ever will.
Sandler and director Frank Coraci, another frequent collaborator, still stuff the film with reliably funny people. Will Forte, David Spade, Jon Lovitz, Norm MacDonald and Chris Parnell represent the SNL crew, with Chris Kattan stopping by to do what he does best- remain silent. More serious types like Nick Nolte, Danny Trejo, Steve Zahn, Steve Buscemi and Harvey Keitel pop on to make some funny faces. John Turturro also has an amusing bit as Abner Doubleday that wouldn't be too out of place in a Wes Anderson movie. But what accounts for major characters played by the likes of Dan Patrick and Blake Shelton? Why is Vanilla Ice allowed to riff as a rapping Mark Twain for what feels like hours? This seems like comedic malpractice.
Paradoxically, Sandler might be one of the hardest working actors in Hollywood, but he frequently seems tired and apathetic in some roles (see: Cage, Nicolas). In this, he's playing a legendary stoic badass, which allows him to slump his shoulders and speak in a gruff, mumbly monotone. It's not the easiest acting job he's ever had, but that’s probably because he's not wearing his typical oversized polo.
Prison felt harder at times when I had no choice but to sit there and experience a marathon of "The Longest Yard" and "Deeds" remakes. I remember all of us being psyched because, in one day in 2019, the prison was rumored to be using the DVD Institutional Movie program to air "Avengers: Endgame". I cannot tell you the absolute rage I felt when the movie began, and it was "Grown Ups 2", maybe the least funniest movie ever made by human beings.
I will grant those behind "The Ridiculous Six" this- it feels like one of the less painful Sandler entries, if only because of its western genre trappings. You can tell Coraci is getting a kick out of deploying the almost-convincing genre score by Rupert Gregson Williams and the spaghetti western extreme closeups.
But that's really not enough to excuse the crude stereotyping and remedial gags. And at least the Antoine Fuqua "Magnificent Seven" redo, released around the same time, had about three interesting leads. Amongst the main six here, Lautner gets the most laugh lines, and none of them land. It's painful to see the underemployed Garcia in the "token fat guy" role you see on every Sandler movie, particularly considering, had he lived, the humiliation would have been reserved for Chris Farley.
Sandler will pop up again here- this site is geared towards cinema from 2014 to last year, roughly. Few leading men were as active as he was while largely remaining off the studio movie grid, the grid prisoners like me explored through both basic cable and the (sometimes) biweekly prison institution movie program. In my memories, as a kid watching Canteen Boy on SNL in the nineties, I never would have dreamed that Sandler would be the busiest leading man on a thing called the internet. I also never would have dreamed I'd go to prison, though, so maybe dreams are overrated. Join us tomorrow for Day 2 of Western Week.