Critics don’t tend to warm to Adam Sandler’s movies.



It perhaps doesn’t help that these days, he refuses to show them to the press ahead of their release, perhaps because he suspects what the general consensus might be.

But the notices for ‘The Ridiculous 6’, the spoof western which marks the first of three movie projects he’s signed up to make for Netflix, have proved to be a truly awesome early Christmas present for the critical fraternity.

At the time of writing, the movie has scored precisely 0% on reviews aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, which brings together reviews from the leading movie reviewers in the UK and the US.

So that means not a single review so far has been favourable.

In fact, critics hate the movie so much, they’re really going to town on taking the movie apart.

Said Justin Chang in Variety: “Why pay Sandler’s idiot shenanigans the compliment of anger? There’s nothing here so inspired as to warrant the audience’s contempt, much less its surprise.

“The scenery ain’t bad but the laughs are tumbleweed-sparse in The Ridiculous 6’, a Western sendup so lazy and aimless, it barely qualifies as parody.”

Chang goes even further, referring to the star role of a donkey owned by Rob Schnieder’s character Ramon.

“Still, the MVP here is undoubtedly Ramon’s donkey, who gives 110% whether he’s fellating [Taylor] Lautner on screen… or standing perfectly still while Steve Buscemi rubs ointment inside the beast’s rectum. Which, incidentally, would make a far more appropriate destination for 'The Ridiculous Six’ than your Netflix queue.”

Deborah Day in The Wrap surmised: “The Ridiculous 6 is everything wrong with Hollywood for the past two decades.”

Ouch.

In The Playlist, Nick Schager also suggested there was was something perhaps historic in nature with Sandler’s latest effort.

“Without an amusing instinct in its cowboy-hatted head, this painfully protracted, puerile effort meanders about the Old West as if it were making up its nonsense on the fly. The result is a torturous genre joke that marks a new low not only for the star, but for the art of cinematic comedy,” he said.

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On this side of the Atlantic, things were no less brutal.

Nick De Semlyen in Empire called the jokes at the expense of the Native American cast 'wince-inducing’.

“We have the feeling Donald Trump has already added 'The Ridiculous 6’ to his Netflix 'To Watch’ list,” he adds.

The movie seemed somewhat doomed even when it was being made.

It hit the news when a group of Native American actors hired for the movie objected to jokes that they deemed both demeaning and racist.

Producers of the movie then told the actors 'if you guys are so sensitive, you should leave’, which many then did, with one actress saying she was almost reduced to tears.

“This is supposed to be a comedy that makes you laugh. A film like this should not make someone feel this way. Nothing has changed. We are still just Hollywood Indians,” said Allison Young, a Navajo who was on the set.

Brian Tallerico on RogerEbert.com references this incident in his review, but takes a rather more serious view of the gags happening on screen.

“After the controversial walk-offs, Netflix claimed that this was 'satire’,” he writes. “It’s not. There’s nothing satirical about Sandler’s bad Native American accent (which totally comes and goes, by the way) or Schneider’s Hispanic caricature. Saying that this is satire is like the drunk guy at the bar telling you how many black friends he has after telling a racist joke. Don’t fall for it.”

'The Ridiculous Six’, which stars Sandler alongside Rob Schnieder, Terry Crews, Nick Nolte and Luke Wilson, is available to stream on Netflix now.

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Image credits: Netflix