So I’m going to go ahead and try something a little bit
different on this one.
The standard format of Crapshoot has been to highlight the
individual films for all of the things that they do right and wrong in their
own existence and in representing their own genre.
While much of the 2015 slate has left me with an inescapable
frustration to comprehensively cover a run of shallow movies that have drained
my creative fire more than my own tumultuous life circumstances to the point
that I’d really rather just be done with it, I’ve made the decision to pool
coverage of “Mortdecai” and “The Ridiculous 6” into a single flowing analysis
not out of an effort to spare myself just a little bit of pain (although trust
me, it helps) but rather because of the eerie ways in which 2 radically different
films in concept are somehow nigh identical when executed by gradually failing
stars with their heads so far up their own asses it pains you to even remember
the vaguest hint of talent they’ve ever shown across their career regardless of
how much talent you know they have.
Truly I was astonished by what I was beholding. Part of me
almost believes that if I had held a mirror to the DVD copy of “Mortdecai” that
I was renting, its reflection would be a hard copy of “The Ridiculous 6” and I
wouldn’t have even been weirded out by the visual discrepancy.
It should almost go without saying at this point that both
films are terrible; Johnny Depp’s caper mystery set amongst the underground of
unscrupulous art dealing featuring him front and center as the eccentric
mugging jackass that is apparently supposed to be funny for simply being an
eccentric mugging jackass is built upon a shtick that was barely funny at the
height of his career and wastes all of the talent that could have elevated the
dreck that he subjects the viewer to.
Meanwhile, if you are honestly at this point surprised that
Adam Sandler’s western parody a la “The Magnificent Seven” nears a level of
laziness achieved only by the F-grade schlock masterminds of Jason Friedberg
and Aaron Seltzer, I wouldn’t guide you to last summer’s big budget disappointment
“Pixels” but rather ask how comfortable the rock you’ve been living under in
the past 6 or so years has been.
Both movies are god awful, living up to their reputations almost
exceedingly well but the badness isn’t quite delivered in the form you may
expect.
“Mortdecai” and “The Ridiculous 6” never quite grated on my
nerves. They didn’t make me scream in frustration, want to gouge my eyes out,
sob in delirium or particularly test my will to sit through them entirely with
remote controls in hand with thumb at the ready over the power button.
They simply strived to be the worst films that they could be
with passable production values and somewhat competent direction, almost as if
they didn’t even know what the purpose of their own existence was.
Depp’s pitiful antics and wasted talent aside, “Mortdecai”
plays so many elements of its heist storyline painfully straight that the
juxtaposition of his own enforced cartoonish antics against the backdrop of an
otherwise pedestrian setting elicited less rage and more confused head tilting
and eye squinting at how a substantial studio release could be more amateurish in
idea conception than a freshmen college film student’s abstract art house
cinema project.
His gamble creates a bare bones flick serving as an engine
for a bad performance to bring a terrible character to life that nobody wants
to see and every effort that he makes to smile and work his moustache makes me
simply want to hide my face in empathic embarrassment, knowing that this man
was once Gilbert Grape.
Meanwhile, all of the elements that actually contained the
potential to generate humor are left to flounder; Ewan McGregor’s charisma is
completely wasted and the only genuine chuckles I got out of the film were from
Paul Bettany, the only actor that manages to make juxtaposition work to his
advantage as a grizzled lower class London man servant that I can only imagine
would have been the result of Alfred Pennyworth growing up as middle class in
Los Angeles.
None of director David Koepp’s admittedly impressive visual flairs
can distract from how poor this turkey was when it came together at the drawing
board.
The exact same can be said regarding “The Ridiculous 6”
almost tenfold yet this film was slightly more watchable if only to view how
uncomfortably and mesmerizingly depressing it is as an experience.
Sandler’s motley Happy Madison crew shows up in full force
for a film that is the least like everything that they’ve done before yet bizarrely
ends with the same results.
None of Sandler’s bottom of the barrel Happy Madison humor
tends to stick within the context that it was manufactured for to begin with so
the notion of them grafting that shtick onto a genre that is least conducive to
it isn’t just ill conceived but flat out baffling when you realize that they
could have buckled down and made a potentially decent action comedy with the
material that they brought to the table.
The personality quirks of the cast, toilet humor and offensive
stereotyping notwithstanding, lend themselves decently to a more exaggerated take
on the western that could have been fun had it not decided that its major
punchlines should be the results of a donkey having diarrhea and Taylor Lautner
playing a semi-retarded hick with 3 nipples.
Yet it continuously indulges in its own pathos and mythology
with a completely straight face without realizing where the comedy should be
coming from, instead opting for the easiest of gross out, sexist, and racially
insensitive material.
A microcosm of the good film that this could have been
exists in a single scene, involving the titular 6 character stumbling across
Abner Doubleday during his attempt to “create baseball,” crafting all of the
rules as he goes along in order to contrive his own victory in the game.
Fact surrounding the Doubleday myth aside, the scene is
funny, clever, well paced, and could have easily passed as something Mel Brooks
would have written in his heyday before the film promptly returns to its own
regularly scheduled pandering.
Yet somehow, through all of this, watching this cast waste
the wide ranges of talent that they all individually have to embarrass themselves,
Sandler himself looks outright drained and sick of being on set.
His performance is stoic to hide his own apparent lack of
enthusiasm and the only time he ever appears to come to life is during any sort
of celebration scene with a large group of other characters, as if the parties
or interactions were unscripted and they just happened to catch him happier “off
camera” than on.
Both of these movies are cinematic obscenities that may not
be the final nails in the coffins of their respective creators’ mainstream
careers but will definitely be one of them.
And while these kind of failures usually fill me with just a
little bit of glee knowing that good taste wins out in the end, it honestly
just makes me sad to watch 2 people that I know for a fact are immensely
talented would rather squander their names and good will on easy checks that
are clearly diminishing in overall value.
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