There is perhaps no modern-day comedian who walks the delicate line between obnoxiously entertaining and obnoxiously awful quite as often as Adam Sandler. While toeing the line occasionally pays off with gems of sweet, albeit mindless, hilarity (note his movies “Happy Gilmore” and “The Waterboy”), Sandler more often than not dives headfirst into the realm of obnoxiously awful — culminating in results that are painful to watch. His latest Netflix original released on Oct. 7, “Hubie Halloween,” undoubtedly has its clever moments. But much like the rest of Sandler’s corpus, it miscalculates just how much over the top slapstick and juvenile humor a movie can take before it becomes annoying.
The movie follows the story of Hubie Dubois (Adam Sandler), a kindhearted but simpleminded manchild who still lives with his mother in the notoriously spooky city of Salem, Massachusetts. Against the wishes of practically the entire town, the oblivious Hubie persists in his self-proclaimed “purpose in life”: to keep Salem safe on Halloween. But Hubie is an easy target. Relentlessly bullied by most of the town and unable to bike down the street without projectiles being thrown at his head, Hubie is Salem’s laughing stock.
The movie begins on Halloween with several people in town getting kidnapped by a mysterious villain. Curiously, all of the kidnapping victims happen to be the cruelest bullies of Hubie. Hubie spends the night trying to identify Salem’s kidnapper.
The prime suspect, Hubie’s new mysterious neighbor Walter Lambert (Steve Buscemi), displays symptoms of being a werewolf. Then, the movie hints that the kidnapper is a lunatic wearing a pig mask who escaped the insane asylum at the very beginning of the movie. But with an absolute randomness that borders on genius, it is revealed that Lambert is actually just delusional, and the escaped lunatic is really Lambert’s roommate at the asylum trying to convince Lambert to return. The last suspect is Violet Valentine (Julie Bowen), Hubie’s childhood crush who, despite being miles out of Hubie’s league, is also inexplicably in love with him. But alas, Violet only confesses her love to Hubie, and the kidnapper’s identity remains a mystery. Finally, it is revealed that Hubie’s mother actually kidnapped all of his worst bullies to burn them at the stake, giving the audience a satisfying revenge fantasy.
“But Sandler voices Hubie with a mumbling, garbled, incoherent mess of a voice that gets old quite quickly, despite its clear intentions to be funny”
Hubie’s character should be easy to sympathize with: a bullied underdog is ubiquitously relatable. But Sandler voices Hubie with a mumbling, garbled, incoherent mess of a voice that gets old quite quickly, despite its clear intentions to be funny. This unfortunately makes Hubie a rather difficult character to like. By a certain point in the movie, Hubie’s stupidity is a one-note punchline — more draining than it is humorous. Ironically, the mumbling juvenile and idiotic character of Hubie, the character that makes the movie unenjoyable to watch, is a quintessential trope of Sandler’s personal brand. Perhaps then, the annoyingness of Hubie is less a critique of this specific movie than it is an indication that Sandler’s trademark style of comedy is becoming tiring.
The movie is at least self-aware of its flaws. After all, Sandler had promised that if his previous movie Uncut Gems (a dark crime film with critical acclaim) was snubbed at the Oscars, he would retaliate with a movie that was “so bad on purpose.” Uncut Gems got zero nominations at the 2020 Oscars, and, making good of Sandler’s promise, Hubie Halloween is bad. It’s more of a mediocre bad than a horrendous bad: not quite terrible enough to reach the sacred territory of so-bad-it’s-good à la “The Room,” but then again, also not very good. And while self-awareness can be a powerful tool in comedy, the mere presence of it doesn’t inherently make a movie better, especially if nothing is done with it — as was the case in “Hubie Halloween.”
Funnily enough, Hubie Halloween shines most where Sandler is absent. The all-star cast features both rising child actors and acclaimed comedians, and they mesh together surprisingly well. Some of the best moments in the movie come from Maya Rudolph, who plays the hilariously sardonic Mrs. Hennessy alongside Tim Meadow’s desperate-to-please Mr. Hennessy. The assortment of up-and-coming child actors, many of whom were plucked fresh off of Disney Channel, is refreshingly talented, including the likes of Noah Schnapp from “Stranger Things” and Karan Brar from “Jessie.” Nonetheless, the entertaining performances given by the rest of the cast only seem to make Sandler’s portrayal of Hubie all the more wearisome, painting in sharp contrast the movie itself with its potential, if only Sandler had played Hubie with a bit more tact.
“Funnily enough, Hubie Halloween shines most where Sandler is absent”
Still, “Hubie Halloween” does what it’s supposed to do: entertain. The sheer wackiness of the movie will likely be off-putting for more mature audiences, but for younger children or those seeking some mindless entertainment this Halloween, it does the trick. And at the end of the day, it is nothing less and nothing more than a classic Sandler movie: obnoxious, a little heartwarming, and funny in all the stupidest possible ways.
