Here we are, another year, another Adam Sandler film that is sure to really hammer home the fact that Adam Sandler is never again going to produce any quality comedies. The guy is a joke at this point, no-one goes into a Sandler film expecting anything more than a few cheap laughs that you only find mildly amusing out of sympathy for the guy. So as for ‘The Do Over’, this movie is a comedy that at times gets confused and tries to throw in action elements that don’t fit, it has a very predictable by the numbers plot, and so few funny moments that i can count them on one hand, and still have fingers left over. I’ll get this over with now, i’m not going to tear this film a new one because it is starring Sandler. I mean sure, it isn’t funny, it lacks any real engagement with the plot and characters, but i wasn’t bored during this film. It all just kinda flew right by at a quick pace and i didn’t mind the fact that i spent an hour and a half watching it.

It’s safe to say that the biggest factor that really damages Sandler’s films is that his style of comedy just doesn’t work anymore. He relies on the same mannerisms in all of his characters and people just aren’t amused by it anymore. And this film is no different, a lot, and i mean a lot of the jokes completely miss, you see a lot of them coming and it just isn’t funny, you tend to sigh more than you do laugh. But it’s not completely void of humour, as i mentioned, there are maybe 4 funny moments that showed promise, and they’re evenly spread out too. So just as you are starting to lose all hope they hit you with a quick one which i’m not gonna complain about. And David Spade…. well… he was just there the whole time, he maybe contributed to a couple of the funny moments but he wasn’t any more admirable than Sandler in terms of his humour.

And the film throws in a bit of an action plot here and there but never fully explains or develops it until the very messy 3rd act. It doesn’t balance the two (action and comedy) very well at all. Most of the film is comedy with brief action stints woven in with not much explanation, then it flips and goes about 70/30 with action over comedy. And you just aren’t invested into the plot so the twists and turns that it tries to pull with the comical cliche action/comedy moments you aren’t interested in at all. So in the end, this Netflix deal Sandler has going on so far hasn’t managed to deliver. It really is just more of the Sandler humour that you can maybe enjoy if you throw it on in the background at a party where you don’t actually have to pay attention to it. If you are one of the rare breed that finds Sandler’s films funny, then you will probably enjoy this more than most, but there isn’t anything of interest here.

4/10