BEFORE: David Spade carries over from "Loser". Yeah, this one's been on the Netflix list for a while, it comes from Adam Sandler's production company but he's not in it - that made it a bit harder to link to, I could have worked this in last year if only Sandler had starred in it. But David Spade's fine - well, OK - well, acceptable.
Look, I'm looking for something that's a cut above just a below-average romantic comedy, and I"m fairly sure this will be exactly that, but jeez, at least I'll be able to clear it off my to-do list after today, that's got to count for something.
THE PLOT: Tim thinks he's invited the woman of his dreams on a work retreat to Hawaii, realizing too late he mistakenly texted someone from a nightmare blind date.
AFTER: We've become accustomed to SNL being an important step on the road to being a movie star, because enough comedians who put in their time on that NBC sketch show went on to do movies we love, that ultra-talented first group that produced Aykroyd, Murray, Belushi, Chase, Curtin, Radner, Morris and Newman, and then everyone who followed, from Eddie Murphy to Will Ferrell to Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristin Wiig and so on and so on, right through to Pete Davidson and Andy Samberg and Kenan Thompson. Then there are those few who barely worked again after being on the show, like Terry Sweeney, Victoria Jackson and Pamela Stephenson. Maybe some had personal reasons, maybe others had personal problems.
Then there are those comedians who are kind of in the middle, they didn't become "A"-level movie stars after SNL, but they probably will continue to work in movies and TV for as long as they want to. David Spade, Jon Lovitz, Bobby Moynihan - there are roles for them, they're just probably not going to headline movies, they just don't put asses into the movie theater seats. Spade had some successes with "Black Sheep" and "Tommy Boy", but then what the hell was "Joe Dirt"? Never gonna watch it. He did have success in animated films, like "The Emperor's New Groove" and also the "Hotel Transylvania" movies, but "The Wrong Missy" represents the first time I've seen his name above the title in quite some time.
So maybe that's part of why this feels like it started out as an Adam Sandler film, and then either Sandler wasn't available because he was filming "Uncut Gems", or he just took a producing role and threw a bone to his buddy, David Spade. I'll try to investigate this later to confirm. Either way, I have to judge the film as a David Spade film because that's how it ended up. I can't help but notice that he was 56 years old when this film was released, and he's still trying to play characters who are in their mid-thirties - at some point that's just not going to work any more.
Here Spade plays Tim Morris, a man who works for some kind of financial credit company based in Oregon, and we see him go on a disastrous blind date, one where this woman, Melissa, acts very rude and talks about inappropriate things, almost gets him into a fight with a MUCH bigger guy, and also, she carries a huge knife around. Tim tries to escape from the restaurant via the bathroom window, but for some reason she followed him into the men's room, and made his escape impossible. But still he persists, and apparently breaks his ankle jumping out of the window, but Melissa finds him and somehow pops his ankle back into place.
Three months later, Tim bumps into a beautiful woman (also named Melissa) in an airport, and they accidentally switch bags, and this causes her to miss her flight. After catching up with each other and sorting out the luggage, they realizing they're reading the same book, they both don't drink alcohol, and have many other things in common. They exchange numbers and don't have time for much more, because she still has to catch a flight.
Tim waits a respectable amount of time before texting her, and they seem to hit it off even better that way, plus there's a work retreat coming up in Hawaii, and Tim can't wait to invite Melissa because they can spend time together in a beautiful setting and see where this all leads, only there's one problem, when the other Melissa shows up at the airport, he realizes he's been texting the wrong one, it's the woman from the nightmare blind date. I guess you've got to allow some leeway here for the comedy to be possible, I mean I could get all into who booked that ticket, and didn't somebody need to know Melissa's last name for the ticket, didn't she have to produce a photo ID for his company to book the ticket? (Yes, I deal with a lot of flights bought for my boss by film festivals, and yes, I always have to e-mail a scan of his passport AND make sure the ticket matches his name exactly, or there could be trouble at check-in.).
So yeah, NITPICK POINT, this mix-up should not have been possible, but if we don't allow this to happen, then we don't have a movie. Tim figures, what's the worst that could happen during a corporate retreat? Well, we find out because the movie of course has to take this to the extreme, Missy continues to act inappropriately around Tim's co-workers, she nearly gets him fired and also nearly breaks up his new boss's marriage, not to mention she tries cliff-diving and that goes horribly wrong, plus she keeps trying to have sex with Tim, even though he's trying to avoid that, he wants desperately to be with the OTHER Missy, the hot one that he has so much in common with.
I'd like to say this movie has something relevant to say about the mysteries of dating, how people come together more or less at random and then have to decide if they share enough things in common to make it work, or what happens to people's personalities when they start dating someone seriously, or also what happens to people's personalities if they're dating the WRONG person, someone who annoys them or gets under their skin. It can be complicated, so of course this plotline doesn't see the need to deal with it at all, not really, it just wants to reduce things to an "all or nothing" breakdown, someone is absolutely 100% the right person or they're absolutely 100% the wrong person, and I'll just put out there that the truth for any two people coming together is probably somewhere in-between.
Here the "Wrong" Missy means well, but in my opinion that's one of the worst things you can say about somebody. "Oh, he means well..." is just code for "Oh, he keeps screwing up, he can't do anything right." And that's her, but the movie can't seem to stick with its definition of her, and through a bizarre combination of her strange set of impractical skills combined with some form of hypnosis, she turns around Tim's new boss's opinion of him, and therefore by extension she saves his career. And her reward for that is to be told that her invitation to the retreat in the first place was a mistake, and she leaves Hawaii in shame.
But you can probably guess where this all is going to end up, Tim finally meets the "right" Missy again but also feels the absence of the "wrong" Missy, but the film just can't be bothered to explain how this happened. I can, I think in some cases just spending time together enhances the attraction between any two people, I mean, it's not rocket science because you just can't appreciate someone who isn't THERE. But as to whether Tim's newfound feelings for the "wrong" Missy are a result of the time they spent together, some kind of evolution or re-awakening on his part, or the fact that he sustained a head injury, the film is notoriously silent. I guess if you want to figure out the how or why of love, you'll just have to look somewhere else.
Umm, but also, WHY were you looking to a silly stupid David Spade comedy to try to figure out how love works? I guess maybe I was expecting too much.
I didn't get the shadow dance thing during the company talent show AT ALL, I mean, why would anybody do that at a corporate retreat, plus it's so obvious the movie production company went out and hired that group that was on "America's Got Talent", which was clearly made up of very fit, active people and then tried to make us think that the pudgy, doughy actors in this film were doing the shadow dance performance, I mean COME ON, you can't make magic happen just with editing, it has to be somewhat believable.
There's also a threesome scene that goes horribly wrong, but this seems wildly out of place, even for this movie. It also makes the entire situation way more complicated than it ever needed to be, and it isn't even mentioned in the plot breakdown on Wikipedia, that's how much of a throwaway it is - and it doesn't make any sense, and it's not even funny at all. Like, at least try to remember you're making a comedy film, that's my suggestion. Same goes for the whole scene with the shark cage, there's not even an ounce of funny in that, so why is it even there?
Also starring Lauren Lapkus (last seen in "Blended"), Nick Swardson (last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Geoff Pierson (ditto), Jackie Sandler (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Molly Sims (last seen in 'Yes Man"), Sarah Chalke (last seen in "Chaos Theory"), Chris Witaske (last seen in "Unicorn Story"), Rob Schneider (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), John Farley (also last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Jonathan Loughran (ditto), Chris Titone (ditto), Sadie Sandler (ditto), Sunny Sandler (ditto), Robert Harvey (ditto), Allen Covert (ditto), Jorge Garcia (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Joe Anoai, Jared Sandler (also last seen in "Blended"), Arlene Newman (last seen in "Aloha"), Candace Smith (last seen in "End of Watch"), Emma Rose Goldstein, Bobby Lee (last seen in "How It Ends"), Vanilla Ice (also last seen in "That's My Boy"), Lori Pelenise Tuisano (last seen in "Fun Size").
RATING: 3 out of 10 Tropical Itch cocktails
No comments:
Post a Comment