Let’s give David Spade credit where credit is due for still managing to find star vehicles for himself in the year of our collective downfall, 2020. After “Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star” hit theaters in 2003, many assumed that Spade’s proverbial goose was more or less cooked. But not so fast.
Spade, for better or worse, has stuck around, milking his signature put-downs and infantile jokes about bad breath and pubic hair for all they’re worth. The comedian’s last starring role was in “Father of the Year,” a putrid comedy in which Spade essentially played a Joe Dirt 2.0 scumbag who seeks to win the love of his son by beating the crap out of his friend’s nerdy dad. He’s back in his latest Netflix outing, “The Wrong Missy,” directed by “Father of the Year’s” Tyler Spindel, and the new film is only moderately more tolerable than the 2018 dud.
You know you’re in trouble when one of the few laughs offered in this film comes courtesy of Rob Schneider, playing yet another cringe-worthy ethnic caricature, who ostensibly exists only to rub weed-infused hair lotion into his beard and talk about his penis. Laughing yet? This movie is a grueling watch.
“The Wrong Missy” is one of those movies that takes a brain-dead sitcom scenario to the outer limits of what an audience is willing to tolerate. It assumes that mistaken identities, people injuring themselves, and “men dumb, women smart” humor is still amusing after 1998. The fact that the talented Lauren Lapkus was dragged into this mess makes the whole ordeal all the more depressing.
Lapkus plays Missy, an unhinged psychopath who ends up on a disastrous blind date with Spade’s milquetoast corporate stooge, Tim Morris, after he mistakenly sends an invitation-by-text to her instead of the lovely, charming woman (also named Missy, played by Molly Sims) he hooked up with in a janitor’s closet after just meeting at an airport bar. Thus, Tim’s stuck with the wrong Missy on his company’s corporate retreat in Hawaii.
“The Wrong Missy” offers even more proof that Spade just isn’t that funny without his now-deceased friend and comedic foil, Chris Farley. Spade’s snide, smarmy attitude has very little dimension without Farley’s uproarious human-steamroller energy. And no, adding Nick Swardson to the mix is far from adequate compensation.
Like “Just Go With It,” Happy Madison’s last trip to the Aloha State, “The Wrong Missy” is filled with scenes where the characters have to invent outrageous fabrications for no real reason other than that the script requires them to. The movie is chock-full of Sandler’s friends: Schneider, Swardson, John Farley (Chris’ brother), Vanilla Ice, Jackie Sandler, and Jonathan Loughran, better known as the cross-eyed dimwit from “The Waterboy.” Everyone involved in “The Wrong Missy” appears to have had a fun time making the movie, but like too many Happy Madison products, there’s self-satisfaction in the air, as if the filmmakers forgot to include the audience on all the fun they seem to be having.
Even more disturbing than the film’s inevitably mean-spirited sense of humor is the treatment of what, at first, appears to be Missy’s sense of suicidal ideation. This thread mainly exists so that Spindel and Spade can underline what an out-of-control mess Missy is, and so that they can have her tumble down a rocky cliffside at one point, while the other characters shriek in mock-horror. Missy is written in such a contrived, vindictive fashion that she never once comes across as a believable human being, and Lapkus, who is a fantastic comic actress, has been let off the leash to such a degree that clearly no one thought to reel in her more anarchic comedic impulses. She is, admittedly, better here than she was in “Holmes and Watson,” but when is someone going to write a great starring role for her?
Adam Sandler is a brilliantly talented man, and “Uncut Gems” is not the only film to offer proof of this. Quite a few of Sandler’s Happy Madison comedies can be classified as guilty pleasures, and many of his films are certified classics. Spade can be very funny too, specifically in ’90s comedy jewels like “Tommy Boy” and “Black Sheep.” “The Wrong Missy,” though, is just embarrassing. Even during quarantine, surely Netflix and Happy Madison can do better than a movie where Rob Schneider punches a shark square in the face. [D+]
“The Wrong Missy” is available now on Netflix.
