Film 1: The Ridiculous 6 (2015)

What better way to start a film-watching year than an Adam Sandler movie, am I right?
Seriously though, I actually resolved to watch new movies on January 2nd, so this movie was not on my list of movies I've been meaning to see. It just so happened that a close friend had challenged me to try and sit through it a few days earlier, and so it ended up being the film I watched on January 1st.

My opinion on the film is this: it's awful, plain and simple. I've seen far worse, but that's like saying a five-car pile up is less terrible than a train-wreck: just because one is worse than the other, doesn't mean I want to see either of them.

To go in to a bit more detail, however, let's consider the aspects of the film.

Set in the Old West, Adam Sandler plays a half-white man raised by Native Americans who goes by the name of "White Knife." An old bank robber by the name of Frank Stockburn (Nick Nolte) visits Sandler one day, claiming to be Sandler's father, under the guise of wanting to give Sandler his fortune. Shortly thereafter, Frank is kidnapped by his old gang, led by Cicero (Danny Trejo), who holds Frank ransom for the sum of his fortune of $50,000. This causes Sandler to go on a quest to make that money by stealing it from bad people, and along the way he comes across five people who were also fathered by Frank, of varying races and backgrounds. To cut a long story short, the dad turns out to be a bad guy, the brothers work together to beat their dad and his gang, with some help from a few other gang members they turned into good guys with their goodness. Then the brothers are accepted into Sandler's Native American Tribe because they're his brothers. Yay, we won.

The comedy is as lazy as it is offensive. There's not a single clever moment throughout the entire film, and half of what Sandler calls "jokes" involve Native Americans saying unexpected things such as "wow, that was uncool" or having names like "Smoking Fox" and "Beaver Breath". There's plenty of gross-out jokes, inlcuding one about a donkey screwing a fat chick, a donkey projectile-pooping (twice), a donkey licking Taylor Lautner's penis (they use the donkey a lot) and one scene in particular in which Steve Buscemi's doctor character inspect the donkey's prostate and then proceeds to apply ointment with the same finger in Tayor Lautner's mouth and his own lips. Hilarious.

If the comedy is awful, which it is, then the editing is worse. It's bad enough when a bad comedy is 90 minutes of puerile humour and poorly-timed jokes, but The Ridiculous 6 lasts a ridiculous two hours. Most scenes go on for way too long which isn't helped by the lack of laughs. The story is unnecessarily bloated with additional story threads that do nothing to add to what little enjoyment there is to be had with the film. A scene involving the invention of baseball adds about 6 minutes to the runtime and only aids the characters in moving on to the next scene. A secondary gang on the tail of Sandler's character also adds an egregious number of minutes to the runtime, and for seemingly no real reason other than to add minutes to the runtime.

Every actor seems tired; nobody gives a particularly enjoyable performance, even with a cast list that includes those that I've already mentioned, as well as Harvey Keitel, John Turturro and Terry Crews. Sandler in particular just looks like he doesn't want to be there. There's not much else to say about the acting other than that: nobody gives a convincing performance, little of their delivery is enthusiastic, no-one's especially enjoyable to watch.

That said, it's not all bad. The costumes and score are enjoyable enough, giving the standard western look and sound. There a few shots of mountains, trees, rivers and cliffs that look quite lovely. These are not enough to redeem the films' numerous flaws, but they stop it from being a complete and total wash.

The Verdict:

I would not recommend this film to anyone, unless you happen to enjoy Adam Sandler's films. However, it's bad even for him. There are far better ways to spend two hours. There are better comedies, better westerns and better recent films.

Rating: 2.5/10

Watched January 1st, 2016, Published July 1st, 2016

Why am I here?

I was always known as the "Movie Guy" by the people who know me. Even within my group of movie-watching friends, I am the Movie Guy.

I suppose it's not without reason. I watch quite a lot of movies, and usually more than once*. I also like to research and talk about films and film theory more than any other topics, if I could I would do nothing else with my day but watch and discuss movies. However, I have a confession to make.

The truth is, as many movies I have watched, and as many other movies that I have read about, there are still so many movies I haven't seen. I've never watched a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kurbrick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean-Luc Goddard, Werner Herzog, Orson Welles, and a whole lot of other prolific directors. I've only seen one film from Alfred Hitchcock: The Birds (1963). I've never exposed myself to the Chinese film industry, or watched a good deal of French or Italian film, and my knowledge of Japanese film is limited to a few Studio Ghibli works and some Godzilla movies. I haven't seen Titanic, or Braveheart, or Gladiator, or half the blockbusters everyone else has seen. I don't really deserve the title of the "Movie Guy"; my passion doesn't make up for a lack of experience.

In 2016, I seek to begin to change that. I've resolved to watch 366 films, one for every day of the year, that I have never seen before. I want to expose myself to all manner of film, everything I've been missing out on. Everything I've been meaning to see, everything I want desperately to see.

It won't be perfect. Watching a film a day will get tiring sometimes, and there are as many films that I don't want to see as those that I do. However, they will all be documented here: some thoughts and opinions, a bit of an informal review of every film I watch this year. I'm still learning and developing how I criticise, so some of this will probably a little messy, as I'm not used to putting my opinions so blatantly out in the open for everyone to see. It's a little daunting, but I'm excited for it.

Let's do this.

Agent Maine

*I've found some films simply necessary to watch no less than three times in order to read as much of the movie's message as possible, some films are so easy to digest that I can throw them on in the background while I do other things and not lose an experience for doing so, and others I watch half a dozen times simply because I enjoy them so much

Written January 2nd 2016, published July 1st 2016