Adam Sandler is an living, breathing enigma. He started as a young, fairly entertaining comedian on Saturday Night Live who eventually put out a couple of fairly entertaining movies. Since then has put out one painfully awful film after another. A quick gander at his embarrassingly bad filmography should leave you wondering how this guy is still making movies. Here is why he is an enigma – his movies make a lot of money. People go see his stuff and many find it funny. That is a mystery I may never be able to crack.

Sandler’s latest is the western spoof “The Ridiculous 6” and you have to give the guy this – he’s consistent. This has every bit of the stupidity, annoyances, and laziness identified with Sandler’s previous ‘comedies’. The Wild West offers a new setting but Sandler and company do nothing more than stain it with their brand of asininity. I only managed a few grins in this entire dopey and overly long slog.

Sandler plays Tommy who has been raised by the Apache after the murder of his mother. Tommy is given the name “White Knife” and is set to marry Smoking Fox (Julia Jones). A man named Frank Stockburn (Nick Nolte) arrives at the village claiming to be Tommy’s father. He reveals he is terminally ill and that he has $50,000 buried nearby. He wants Tommy and his village to have the money but before they can dig it up bandits arrive and take Frank away because of an outstanding debt. Tommy can’t find the buried loot so he sets out t0 swipe $50,000 in order to save his father.

Along the way Tommy finds that his father has been….active. He meets five different men claiming that Frank Stockburn is the father they have never met. They each join Tommy in his absurd quest to find enough money to pay off his father’s captives. Of course each have their on goofy quirk. Rob Schneider plays a Mexican with a gassy burro (it’s just as offensive as it sounds). Taylor Lautner is a village idiot with a strong neck. Terry Crews is a piano player who hides that he is black. Jorge Garcia is a hairy mute wildman. Luke Wilson is a guilt-ridden boozer.

Then there is the laundry list of cameos and brief appearances which Sandler movies are known for. Harvey Keitel, Jon Lovitz, Blake Shelton, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Will Forte, Vanilla Ice, Chris Kattan, and John Turturro to name a few. Occasionally one of these will offer a mildly amusing moment, but most are just wedged in as a recognizable face. Why some of these guys signed on for such dumb roles and lame material is beyond me.

“The Ridiculous 6” is supposedly a satire of the western genre and all of the formulas and stereotypes they often used. I tend to give movies a lot of leeway and feel some people are often too easily offended. But this film doesn’t have the smarts to sell itself as convincing satire and it’s no wonder some have viewed the characterizations as offensive. When material is this poor it’s hard to accept it as good satire.

Ultimately “The Ridiculous 6” is more of the same from a guy perfectly content with delivering cheap overused gags and the same boring, unfunny formulas. I suppose Sandler is happy cashing the big checks and as long as people still flock to these things I don’t see him challenging himself or changing directions. So we can expect more films like “The Ridiculous 6” – juvenile, aimless, and consistently idiotic wastes of time. Lucky us.

VERDICT – 1.5 STARS

I kinda knew what I was getting into when I decided to watch Adam Sandler’s “Grown Ups”. Sandler hasn’t put out a good movie in years and his films have become cheap, lazy, and formulaic. As I expected, “Grown Ups” is no different. It’s a tedious and unfunny movie that provides more moans and head-shakes than laughs. It’s a lame and juvenile exercise in banality that again proves that Sandler’s once promising career is on the ropes.

Sandler teams up with Kevin James, David Spade, Chris Rock, and Rob Schneider to play five childhood friends who are reunited after the death of their old junior high basketball coach. After attending the funeral, the five take their families to a lake house for the 4th of July weekend in hopes of catching up. Of course none are completely forthcoming about their lives and instead choose to impress their friends by making things seem better than they really are. Each bring along their own quirky baggage including a nagging mother-in-law, maladjusted children, and a 70-year old wife. Each are played for laughs but none are even remotely funny. Of course families come together, friendships are rekindled, and audiences are bludgeoned to death with one stupid, rehashed gag after another.

Sandler co-wrote and co-produced this mess and he doesn’t seem to know what kind of movie he wants to make here. The movie jumps back-and-forth between family friendly and filthy bathroom comedy with neither being effective. He employs so many of the same cheap and overused gags that have become commonplace in Adam Sandler movies. We get fart jokes. We get urine jokes. We even get lowbrow breast milk jokes. “Grown Ups” pulls out all the stops to try to cover up its appallingly poor writing. You name the gimmick and you’ll probably find it here.

I was also taken back by Sandler’s sometimes shameless uses of the children in the film. In the movie, one boy is 4-years old but still breast feeds. There are several scenes involving breastfeeding with the child present and numerous lines of dialogue that calls for the boy to say all sorts of crude things about it. I’m not trying to say I’m the end-all, be-all when it comes to determining what’s proper for a child or even for what passes as funny. But this really felt wrong and it certainly wasn’t funny. Sandler doesn’t show much more respect for the other child actors but at least they are older and don’t feel quit as exploited.

There is absolutely nothing genuine about “Grown Ups”. The characters feel fake. The relationships feel fake. The attempts at humor certainly feel fake. Even when the movie tries to drum up some emotion and sentiment it feels completely forced and fabricated. None of the actors really sell their character. Kevin James comes the closest but even he is a mixture of numerous characters we have seen before. Even the wives are shallow and one-dimensional and contribute their fair share of cringe-worthy scenes. The material is so bad that it’s impossible to invest in anyone or believe in anything you’re seeing on-screen.

When it comes down to it “Grown Ups” is yet another sloppy, adolescent “comedy” and another red mark on Adam Sandler’s resume. There’s absolutely nothing to take away from the movie and I could think of a thousand things I would rather do than sit through it again. This begs the question, how on earth did this monstrosity gross over $270 million worldwide? Is this really the best Hollywood can do? Do people really find this stuff funny? Who knows, maybe I’m the one who is out of the loop on this one.