Why Adam Sandler’s Net­flix west­ern The Ridicu­lous 6 deserves its success

The lead-lined safe that con­tains the finan­cial par­tic­u­lars of the recent­ly glob­al VOD behe­moth Net­flix is one that is bolt­ed, pad­locked and heav­i­ly safe-guard­ed from pry­ing eyes. Dis­trib­u­tors and exhibitors would no doubt have a keen inter­est in con­firm­ing audi­ence view­ing habits and whether this new duvet-day form of home cin­e­ma is real­ly mak­ing as hefty an impact as is gen­er­al­ly thought.

Net­flix have, how­ev­er, dis­sem­i­nat­ed a few salient nuggets in order to get the col­lec­tive tongue wag­ging and keep the sub­scriber base expand­ing, the lat­est being the rev­e­la­tion that Adam San­dler com­e­dy-west­ern vehi­cle, The Ridicu­lous 6, has – per an announce­ment by the company’s chief con­tent offi­cer Ted Saran­dos – been ​“the most-watched movie in the his­to­ry of Net­flix” in its first 30 days on the service.

The knee-jerk sub­tex­tu­al read­ing of this state­ment is that Net­flix oper­ates as a mech­a­nised cin­e­mat­ic feed­ing sys­tem which mere­ly cor­rals con­tent in front of dead eye­balls with its auto-start­ing, gener­ic ghet­toi­sa­tion sys­tem, and count­less rec­om­men­da­tion algo­rithms. But maybe the real answer could be that The Ridicu­lous 6 is a bet­ter film than the tepid crit­i­cal recep­tion might have you believe?

The ini­tial signs were not healthy: one of the rea­sons the film gained a cer­tain noto­ri­ety was less to do with the nov­el­ty of its release strat­e­gy and more to do with the fact that mem­bers of its cast and crew deemed it to be racial­ly insen­si­tive while mak­ing it. Nev­er a good sign. Now the film has been released, these issues have either been excised from the fin­ished film, or were nev­er a major prob­lem in the first instance. While the film does lean on broad racial stereo­types to mine its humour, it does so as a way of mock­ing clas­sic west­erns rather than as a cal­cu­lat­ed slan­der towards mar­gin­al ethnicities.

It must be said, click­ing on that big ​‘play’ but­ton was an action fraught with trep­i­da­tion and fear, and ten min­utes in there was cer­tain­ly the feel­ing that this was not going to be an easy two hours of cin­e­mat­ic con­sump­tion. The plot sees a gang of mis­be­got­ten ​“broth­ers” com­ing togeth­er in an effort to locate their estranged father – a seed-spread­ing cad played by Nick Nolte. They meet friends and ene­mies along the road, and it all ends with a big old shoot out.

The crew are lead by Sandler’s Tom­my Stock­burn, aka the White Knife, a mid­dle class dandy raised by native Amer­i­cans and trained in close-quar­ters com­bat. San­dler suc­cess­ful­ly chan­nels the jad­ed, ornery qual­i­ties of a Clint East­wood or Charles Bron­son, and man­ages to sus­tain his char­ac­ter across the film’s entire run­time – no small feat for San­dler. It could eas­i­ly be chalked up as one of the actor’s most tech­ni­cal­ly pro­fi­cient and stern­ly com­mit­ted per­for­mances. Per­haps this is damn­ing him with faint praise, but he takes lead­er­ship respon­si­bil­i­ties at the expense of being fun­ny – he is the film’s nec­es­sary straight man, and takes on the role with unself­con­scious dignity.

The struc­ture of the piece is one pow­ered by com­ic flash­backs, with each new mem­ber of the crew arriv­ing with an amus­ing or unlike­ly back­sto­ry. The best of which is Luke Wilson’s dis­graced secu­ri­ty guard who, let’s just say, made a major foul-up on an assign­ment at Washington’s Ford’s The­atre. The writ­ing is of a high­er stan­dard than expect­ed, the only major rough patch being an extend­ed digres­sion involv­ing John Tur­tur­ro doing a posh Eng­lish accent and invent­ing the game of base­ball in the mid­dle of the plains. It’s as pro­longed and con­fus­ing as an actu­al game of base­ball… which may be the point.

Beyond that, the com­ic hit rate is heart­en­ing­ly high, with a clutch of stel­lar set pieces that might even be described as genius. One involves Har­vey Kei­t­el as a swag­ger­ing, mous­tache-twirling bar own­er who gets his come­up­pance in a way that ref­er­ences ​’80s splat­ter com­e­dy, Re-Ani­ma­tor. Anoth­er con­cerns Tay­lor Laut­ner – sup­ply­ing a career best per­for­mance as wide-eyed hay­seed, Lil’ Pete, and prov­ing that he may have found his méti­er in com­e­dy cin­e­ma – in a scene where he man­ages to sur­vive a pub­lic hang­ing in high style.

It would be easy to reel off all the fun­ny moments, but time should be spent kneel­ing at the alter of the film’s direc­tor, Frank Coraci. Often thought of as Sandler’s prank mon­key, this being their fourth col­lab­o­ra­tion as direc­tor and actor, Coraci proves with The Ridicu­lous 6 that he pos­sess­es a hard­wired a knack for com­ic chore­og­ra­phy – he knows where to put the cam­era, he knows how to film reac­tions, he knows how long to milk a sin­gle gag. The for­mu­la didn’t work so well for the pair’s exe­crable pre­vi­ous, Blend­ed, per­haps due to the fact that the mate­r­i­al was aimed at a younger, broad­er audi­ence. But here it works like gangbusters.

One thing The Ridicu­lous 6 has which could be salient towards its suc­cess is that it has soul. It’s not a nasty film, even though the social prove­nance of its diverse array char­ac­ters is often the butt of cru­el jokes. And there are lots of jokes about cum. But the film’s true high­light is a camp­fire sequence in which all the mem­bers of the ​“six” take the verse of a sing-song, and it’s just an utter­ly sweet and love­ly moment. San­dler­pho­bics might take some con­vinc­ing to go there, but in a sub genre (the ​“com­e­dy west­ern”) that’s in des­per­ate need of qual­i­ty addi­tions, this one is right up there.