Pros: Many famous actors and stars in episodic roles; Hubie thermos Cons: Script, characters, voices of the heroes, almost everything in this film is very bad Hubie Halloween / “Hubie Halloween”
Genre Comedy
Directed by Stephen Brill
Cast: Adam Sandler (Hubie DuBois), Kevin James (Officer Steve Downing), Julie Bowen (Violet Valentine), June Squibb (Mrs. DuBois), Maya Rudolph (Mrs. Herlihy), Ray Liotta (Mr. Landolfa), Steve Buscemi (Walter Lambert) ), Rob Schneider (Richie Hartman), Shaquille O’Neal (DJ Aurora), etc.
Studio Happy Madison Productions, Netflix
Year of release 2020
Site IMDb
Adam Sandler is an amazing actor. Winner of three and nominated for eleven more Golden Raspberries (only Sylvester Stallone, recognized as the worst actor of the 20th century, is doing better). The man who has starred in a quadrillion bad comedies with an average rating of 5/10. On the other hand, he is a very good dramatic actor, having received critical acclaim for his roles in films such as Uncut Gems, The Meyerowitz Stories and Funny People. Sandler’s films have grossed more than $2 billion, and his deal with Netflix is the envy of everyone in Hollywood.
The first deal between Netflix and Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions was made in 2014 for six films that Sandler would produce for the streaming service. You must understand that Happy Madison Productions is famous for the “quality” of its films. None of the more than 40 films the studio has produced since its founding in 1999 have received a Metacritic composite score higher than 61/100, and the company’s output includes some of the worst films in cinematic history – Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (9/100), Strange Wilderness (12/100) and The Master of Disguise (12/100). Nevertheless, for some reason that is inexplicable to me, these films are watched well, and on Netflix they even set record after record.
Sandler’s first film for Netflix, the comedy western The Ridiculous 6, released in 2016, received extremely negative reviews, but nevertheless set a service record for views in 30 days. It was followed by equally bad The Do-Over, Sandy Wexler, The Week Of and Murder Mystery. The detective comedy Murder Mystery (2019) with Sandler and Jennifer Aniston updated Netflix records – in the first three days the film was watched in 30.9 million households, and in four weeks this figure increased to 73 million. Even if we take the average cost of a movie ticket in USA for $10 and not taking into account the fact that in one household two, three or more people could see the film, this will give a simply fantastic figure for theoretical rental fees. Hubie Halloween is the sixth and final film in the 2014 deal.
And although the amount of the first contract between Sandler and Netflix has not yet been disclosed, the parties are quite satisfied with the cooperation. According to Netflix, even before the release of Hubie Halloween, viewers of the service have spent more than 2 billion hours watching Sandler’s films since 2015. So the parties signed a new distribution agreement, now for four films. The value of this deal is estimated at $275 million. So much for bad comedies with Sandler!
As much as I’d like to, it’s time to move on to the culprit behind this material, the horror-comedy Hubie Halloween, which is a strong contender for a spot on Happy Madison Productions’ list of worst films.
The film tells the story of a strange “guy”, Hubie DuBois, who lives in Salem, Massachusetts. Yes, the same Salem that became famous for its witch trials. Hubie, who overreacts to everything around him, gets scared easily and reports the slightest violation or suspicion of violation to the police, is not liked in the city. Both adults and children mock him quite cruelly, they scare him, they make fun of him. But Hubie treats everything with a condescending smile and quickly forgives his offenders. Every Halloween, Hubie takes to the streets of the city to protect the peace of its residents and children. But this Halloween, something really strange is happening on the streets of Salem.
Hubie Halloween is one of those movies that is just too painful to watch. This is exactly the case when actors are humiliated in front of the audience, and those who look at it are ashamed. I can’t even say what’s especially bad about this picture… Perhaps that’s all. A catastrophically stupid script, unfunny jokes and gags, out-of-the-box humor, Sandler’s frozen grimace (damn, it’s probably terribly difficult to spend the entire film with such a face), his changed voice (no, this is not a dubbing glitch, such a terrible grunting-quacky accent in the original English version). Hubie Halloween is an astonishingly, simply exemplary bad movie. What can I say, if the only bright spot in the picture is the Hubie thermos transformer, from which the main character makes more and more new devices.
However, Sandler and his friends seemed to have a good time filming the film. An unreal number of famous actors and stars appeared in Hubie Halloween. The tiny opening episode featured Ben Stiller, a reprise of his role in Sandler’s film Happy Gilmore (1996), legendary basketball player Shaquille O’Neal played radio DJ Aurora, sports radio host Dan Patrick played a school principal, and Boston TV news anchor Elaina Pinto is a presenter on a Salem television station. Sandler’s wife Jackie appeared as reporter Traystie Phillips, while their daughters Sadi and Sunny played the adopted daughters of Violet Valentine, Hubie DuBois’s love interest. The film also featured Steve Buscemi, Ray Liotta and Rob Schneider, comedian Kevin James, comedians Maya Rudolph and Melissa Villaseñor, comedian Kenan Thompson, director and producer Michael Chiklis, singer China Anne McClain, etc. The collection of bad takes before the credits only proves that the whole crew had a great time.
Well, as long as people watch movies like this, Adam Sandler and Happy Madison Productions will continue to make them, and Netflix will not stop bringing them to audiences. I’ll probably rewatch the last comedy Sandler made before the Netflix deal – Pixels. Firstly, Sandler doesn’t act there, and secondly, this is still a film about classic video games.
Conclusion:
A disgusting horror-comedy that is life-threatening to watch sober
