I am… perplexed and befuddled by Hubie Halloween. On the one hand, I shouldn’t be… it’s yet another low effort Adam Sandler comedy on Netflix. Yet… there’s something just… weird about this one. Just… weird. And, of course, there’s the tragedy that is Uncut Gems… and before that, Punch-Drunk Love (and Reign Over Me). Adam Sandler keeps trying (and proving) he can do more than stupid comedy… and, when he thinks he’s out, they pull him back in.
Because make no mistake, this is Adam Sandler going back to the well. Hubie Halloween is, in many ways, just as dumb a comedy as he makes these days. But it also had a random weirdness that suggests he’s trying… trying, but failing.
Hubie Halloween stars Sandler as a…. as… umm… maybe the Waterboy as a middle-aged man? As a mentally challenged cajun in Massachusetts? As the butt of all the jokes and target of all the bullies in Salem (where the movie takes place)? The plot of the movie is a vague hand-waving bit of nonsense about a psychopath who escapes the hospital and returns home… with some direct nods to Halloween (the movie). And Sandler’s slow witted doofus has to… I dunno… wander around the movie being weird and stupid and circle the drain of the shallow, almost non-existent, plot. He’s playing the town’s volunteer safety inspector and notices people vanishing… but thinks its a local werewolf…
What’s baffling to me most is that this movie continuously thinks that its jokes are A) funny and B) worth repeating over and over again. There’s the rule of three in comedy writing that suggests a bit is funniest when is told three times. Any more and you’re just repeating yourself and the humor gets stale. They repeated the same joke about, for example, Sandler’s magic thermos (it can do anything). Or the funny t-shirts his oblivious mother wears. Or how scared he gets over the smallest thing. These jokes are barely funny the first time and we’re subjected to them endlessly.
But the movie does have some charms, I’ll admit. It’s not the worst Sandler comedy. I did chuckle now and then and I did like the actors playing the two teenagers (they were charming in their subplot). And Steve Buscemi is in the flick and he’s doing something that borders on funny. As odd as anything else in the movie… but occasionally amusing, if not just weird.
So since I had a couple chuckles and since the movie appears to be trying to do something, I won’t call it the worst flick of the year or of Sandler’s Netflix comedy career. Take that for what it’s worth…
Score: 65