Netflix, The Ridiculous 6, and the making of awful

Adam Sandler’s first Netflix feature film is the member of an exclusive club — the zero percent club. A club so exclusive that only 43 movies since the early 1980s have achieved the honour of the lowest possible rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And for good reason; the 2015 film directed by Sandler’s long-time partner in Crime Frank Coraci (Blended, Click, The Wedding Singer) leaves just about everything to be desired. Intended to be a satire on John Sturges’ 1960’s film series The Magnificent Seven, the laughs were few and far between, if ever audible at all.

The film follows White Knife (Sandler), a white man who had been raised by Native Americans, on a mission to save his life-long estranged bank-robbing father Frank Stockburn (Nick Nolte), from a gang of bandits. Along his journey across America’s Wild West, White Knife miraculously encounters five of his half-brothers who join his crusade: Ramon (Rob Schneider), a Mexican donkey rider; Danny (Luke Wilson), Abraham Lincoln’s failed bodyguard; Chico (Terry Crews) a saloon pianist; Herm (Jorge Garcia), a non-verbal moonshine-selling mountain man, presumed to have fetal alcohol syndrome; and, Lil’ Pete (Taylor Lautner), an intellectually disabled farmer. Rotten Tomatoes reviewers called the film: “Every bit as lazily offensive as its cast and concept would suggest” and they weren’t wrong.  

Throughout the film, White Knife can be seen incoherently moaning to invoke Native American mysticism; he uses these powers to break into a bank vault, and to understand Herm’s incomprehensible grunting. Is it any wonder that at least a dozen Native American actors walked off the set in New Mexico, in response to the offensive stereotyping? The actors were told the film would be humorous, not racist — but when Native American culture is mocked with such indifference, and the female Native American characters were given names like “Beavers Breath”, “Smoking Fox” and “Never Wears Bra” (played by Sandler’s wife, Jackie Sandler), the actors were understandably upset. Derogatory stereotyping of Native American culture is one of the many obvious bad ideas portrayed in the film.  

Allison Young, a member of the Navajo Nation tribe, was among them. She told Country Today Media Network: “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.” When she raised her concerns with the production team, she said that she was met with derision. “They told us, ‘If you guys are so sensitive, you should leave.’”

The only redeeming scene of the film was when the six half-brothers stumble upon Abner Doubleday (John Turturro) in the desert and agree to partake in the first ever game of baseball, or “sticky mcshnickens” as Doubleday calls it. Appearing to make the rules up as he goes, Doubleday highlights the ridiculous nature of often contradictory baseball rules, including when one can steal a base, and to whom a tie goes. But unsurprisingly, even this scene is racist. One of the two teams is composed of Chinese immigrants wearing conical hats, and when one deigns to correct Doubleday on his made-up rules, he is ridiculed and repeatedly told that his new name is “short stop”.

Also, along racist lines is the potential use of brownface. While it’s impossible to say for certain that Schneider wore brownface in his role as the Mexican half-brother, based on the rest of the film — which serves up women, First Nations, Mexicans, disabled people and sexual assault as a more-than-you-can-handle buffet of supposed comedy — one could assume this is a line that the production team would not hesitate to bulldoze right past.

Despite its cringeworthy content and problematic nature, the film made it to the number one spot in every territory where Netflix operates, and was viewed more times in 30 days than any other film in Netflix’s history. I guess misery loves company. As Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times says, the Ridiculous Six is a ridiculous waste of time: “Thanks for Nothing, Netflix.”