I've not been a fan of Sandler's comedies for quite some time. I enjoyed the slapstick silly ones when he was a lot younger such as Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison but out of most of the comedies that he has made since then, especially the ones where he brings along his SNL alum with him, to be pretty bad.
This is most evident to me in the Grown Ups films which I thought were just awful and simply a way for Sandler to be a nice guy and get a paycheck to his much less successful Saturday Night Live buddies. Sure, it was a nice gesture on his part and we all know that Rob Schneider could use the money and exposure that he would not be capable of getting on his own because he isn't funny, but in the end these movies are just really bad.
The Week Of is a new Sandler film that focuses on what it is like for people that are now "grown up" but in this instance it is all based around the marriage of Sandler's daughter to Chris Rock's son.
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Fortunately, Sandler didn't drag along everyone with him this time and thank god that Schneider isn't in the film at all but this doesn't change the fact that it has essentially the same formula as all of those movies where he did bring them along. Also, just like those movies it is less a movie with a compelling story and more of a series of mishaps that result in Sandler screaming like a loon and Chris Rock attempting to be the voice of reason. It also didn't really even make me smile, let alone laugh, through basically the entire movie.
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Rock and Sandler can only butt heads over elements of the upcoming wedding so many times before you start to really get tired of the same thing happening over and over again before you stop even looking for moments of laughter and just want them to get on with it already.
Sandler has been in a contract to work exclusively with Netflix for his films over the past few years and all of the comedies have been garbage in my mind. Sandler has a lot or perhaps complete creative control over these films and this list of bad films includes The Ridiculous 6, The Do-Over, and Sandy Wexler. The only good film that has come from this contractual agreement with Netflix has been The Meyerowitz Stories but this last film was not a comedy for the most part and I'm one of those people that think that Sandler is actually a surprisingly good serious actor, but simply doesn't take on these roles very often.
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There are a couple of moments in the The Week Of where Sandler changes over to emotional serious acting that really stand out as the best moments of the movie but this film is a comedy and virtually none of the comedy is even remotely funny.
Normally, I would say that Sandler comedies are at least a good way to waste some time and have a mindless 90 minutes of near entertainment but The Week Of just uses the same techniques over and over to the point where it gets old really fast. I think the worst part of it is when Sandler and Rachel Dratch, who played the married couple of the bride are arguing off-screen in a really loud fashion with their faked overly-stereotyped Long Island accents.
Lazy and uninspired, this film drags on and like a lot of movies that they had to somehow make 90 minutes long, about half of it could have not been in the film and the same story could have been told.
There's a reason why that trailer focuses so heavily on that one scene where Rock and Sandler are alone in the car because that is one of the only humorous scenes in the entire film.
Should I watch it?
I don't think that Sandler is even trying to make his Netflix films good and suspect he might be saving whatever good ideas he has left for when the contract is over and he can return to the box office. This would make sense financially, since Mr. Sandler is going to get paid the same regardless of how well-received the movies are. Unfortunately, it was recently revealed that Netflix and Sandler have signed another contract for an additional 2-4 films so I think we can count on this series of terrible films to continue into the foreseeable future.
I would watch almost anything else rather than this movie. It's bad... I mean really bad
