“Why in the hell are you reviewing this film Satirical?” you might be asking. “I know the video game release schedule has slowed to its usual ant with cement feet pushing a monster truck tire through molasses crawl for the summer, but even then this is low hanging fruit.” First of all, I have to commend you for your excellent mimicry of my writing style and second of all because what else am I going to do? The U.S. is still making me wince in pain every time I read the news, talk to anybody or look out my window, so why don’t I take out some pent up frustration on a film that nobody with any taste will like? I’d review Valorant, but I predict that introducing the League of Legends community to voice chat will have a similar effect to when everybody’s racist relatives discovered Facebook.
The Wrong Missy is another Happy Madison produced what I would tentatively call a “film.” In the long tradition of Adam Sandler’s career, he follows up doing one movie where he actually seems like an actor, in this case last year’s excellent Uncut Gems, with producing… Or maybe that isn’t the right word… Enabling a hacked out, horribly written, obnoxious comedy.
The Wrong Missy starts off with our main character, played by David Spade, meeting two women named Missy before going to a company retreat. One is obnoxious and weird and the other is his dream girl but oh no, he accidentally invites the wrong one to the retreat and hilarious hijynx ensue.
Critiquing a bad comedy is really difficult to do because there’s only so many ways you can say that something isn’t funny, but these Happy Madison movies have practically gotten unfunny down to a science. There’s a formula that every one of these films follows. Take a boring, generic character, usually an uptight corporate type and stick them alongside a horribly annoying and loud foil. Then, have all of Adam Sandler’s friends star in it, including Rob Schneider who always has to play a vaguely foreign person with a retarded accent. Write them a horribly lazy and unfunny script and add in some unoriginal, tacked on sentimental resolution that makes no sense and you have every single Happy Madison movie. And I’m not saying that most of these films taking place in beautiful holiday destinations is Sandler using studio money to go on vacation with his SNL buddies, but it’s certainly convenient that this movie is shot almost entirely in Fiji.
The biggest problem with the script is the overall story. While the plot definitely isn’t original, it could still be a decent enough premise around which to base a silly comedy. David Spade is initially annoyed by the free spirited and crazy Missy but eventually warms up to her, the problem is they seemed to have cut out the middle part where they actually connect. It really is just a flick of the switch and suddenly they’re in love. I can buy that their clashing personalities could bring out the best in each other, but there’s no character development, and the resolution is so rushed and ham-fisted that most of it revolves around a random Vanilla Ice cameo and no, I’m not making shit up to see if you’re still paying attention.
God forbid we cut out the pointless and unfunny scenes where Rob Schneider shows up, possibly because he’s a reliable way for Sandler to embezzle studio money. When you write a completely predictable and unoriginal story and still manage to fuck up the basics of storytelling, you know the effort levels just aren’t there. Writing stories really isn’t that hard guys, I do it plenty better, and I think putting female Ukrainian Assassins who wear stockings in everything is reasonable.
While there are a few visual and physical gags that made me chuckle, and at times Spade elevates the mediocre script, there just isn’t enough laughs to be had. Humor is of course subjective, but I don’t find replacing wit and intelligent comedy with constant yelling and low effort dick jokes funny. It doesn’t help that most of the performances are laughably phoned in or just flat out bad. I’m not saying that Lauren Lapkus is only in the movie because she’s married to the head of Netflix’s original content department, but it’s certainly convenient it works out that way.
Overall, The Wrong Missy is yet another low effort, low brow, generic comedy from Happy Madison. Sure, it’s nowhere near as apocalyptically bad as Jack and Jill or Grown Ups, but that’s a bar as low as a tavern inside a geothermal power plant. The Happy Madison boys are all pushing 60 at this point. How long are we expected to laugh at them acting like morons and pretend that trying to bang attractive women half their age isn’t weird? Maybe I just can’t enjoy studio comedies any more, and I’m in the minority of people who don’t think intelligently written films like The Nice Guys and The Favorite are boring and quaint, but we can all certainly do better than shit like this. Skip it unless you seriously undervalue your time.