The Ridiculous 6

• Directed by Frank Coraci
• December 11, 2015

Six men learn they have the same bank-robbing father and set out to save him from his old gang when he is captured.

The Ridiculous 6 is not a world-renowned bit of comedy. Reportedly critics gave it a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. For some that is enough to declare it a turd but if the decisions of a website are enough to decide what you watch and not your own internal preferences then maybe watching anything is not for you.

The film itself is a broad satire of Westerns and at points the West itself. Because of that The Ridiculous 6 met with controversy during production and release. How serious depends on what report you read. I think some people failed to get this was a comedy and in comedy you make jokes.

Adam Sandler has a gift for creating entertaining yet stupid comedies. They are probably closer in execution to Three Stooges films than anything else. They go for the silly and to entertain with logic being secondary to executing the joke of the scene.

Sandler stars in this along with Terry Crews, Jorge Garcia, Taylor Lautner, Rob Schneider, and Luke Wilson as the titular gang of brothers who stumble upon each other. After the first brother is connected with you pretty much get how the rest of the brothers are going to be found. And you don’t care. This is just dumb entertainment and there’s nothing wrong with dumb entertainment.

Sandler has a gift for getting some supporting players you would not normally think would do his stuff or are outside of the box to participate in them. How he does it is one of the greater mysteries to me. We have Harvey Keitel, Nick Nolte, Blake Shelton, Danny Trejo, Vanilla Ice as Mark Twain (WTF?!) among others.

And that list does not include his friends and family that take up roles here as well. Nick Swardson, Steve Buscemi, Jon Lovitz, Norm Macdonald (final film role), Chris Parnell, Chris Kattan, and David Spade as Gen. Custer among others. And then there is just the general cast of recognizable names. This movie is just packed with talent that is there to entertain and have fun.

The character of White Knife (Sandler) has a great deal in common in execution with Sandler’s character from Don’t Mess with the Zohan. If you’ve seen that movie, then you have a pretty good idea of what his character here is capable of. Toss in a little bit of stereotypical film mysticism (which they do hang a lantern on from time to time) and you get some really weird moments. 

There are some surprisingly funny jokes and there are moments that’ll just make you smile. Many of those come from raunchy humor making this not for everybody. The Ridiculous 6 starts off okay and gets stronger as it moves along. About midway through we get our first historical figure which starts a joke trend in the movie with other historical figures.

The jokes get a bit meta with the historical figures being presented as caricatures rather than characters which is fine. Custer goes on about his hair and references getting scalped. White Knife’s brother Danny (Luke Wilson) is ultimately responsible for the death of Lincoln as he took a bathroom break that allowed Booth (Chris Kattan) to kill Lincoln. Lincoln (Dan Patrick) exclaims as Danny leaves “Are you sh****ng me?!”

The scenery is great and they nicely capture the look of older Westerns in this movie. Old Westerns could be very pretty to watch as they embraced the scenery and this often does just that.

The Ridiculous 6 is an entertaining Adam Sandler film. There are laughs and plenty of crude humor. This is a enjoyable treat for fans of comedy as well as Western films. I say take a look.