It’s been said that Adam Sandler has used his films as a way to get paid for he and his friends to travel to exotic locations. Never has this been more evident than in “The Do-Over” in which Sandler and David Spade get to relax in gorgeous Puerto Rico. They do admittedly spend the majority of the film in Georgia, so this isn’t as excessive as some of their other work vacations (such as “Blended,” “Just Go With It,” and “50 First Dates”). However, it’s their blandest trip yet.
The plot to “The Do-Over” is more complicated than it should be. Charlie (David Spade) is a down on his luck regional bank manager whose life is a revolving door of misery: his wife uses him and still sleeps with her ex, his stepchildren abuse him, and nobody takes him seriously. At a class reunion, he bumps into his former best friend Max (Adam Sandler), nicknamed Maxi-Pad so he can utter the line “Let Maxi-pad soak up your pain!” It turns out Max, always poised for failure, is an FBI agent living the high life. Seeing his best friend in a rut, he takes Charlie out for the time of his life.
Charlie’s life would come to an end at the hands of Max, so to speak, as the man nicknamed after a tampon fakes his and his best friend’s death. It turns out that Max isn’t an FBI agent, but a mortician who stole two dead bodies and took their identities. He also went scavenging through one of the corpse’s rectums and retrieved a key to a safety deposit box which, lo and behold, has over a million dollars and a key to a mansion in Puerto Rico. The two leave their past lives behind and take a journey into paradise.
Not too much time is spent in Puerto Rico, though it feels like an eternity. Max and Charlie waste no time in enjoying the high life, relaxing in their pool, knocking back drinks at a bar near the beach, and picking up women at a nightclub. One gag has Charlie involved in a threesome alongside Luis Guzman, who teabags him and drips ball sweat on his face. It’s that kind of comedy. Unfortunately, it’s not a funny one.
Gross-out gags such as the teabagging are surprisingly far and few between, as are many jokes, as the humor takes a backseat to the convoluted story. It turns out Max stole the identities of two men on the FBI’s most wanted list and now the two identity thieves are being hunted. To find answers, the two return to Georgia, track down the wife of one of the deceased, Heather (Paula Patton), and patch together the clues.
Normally I’d refrain from spoiling a film, but to effectively criticize the film, I’m going to do so. It turns out one of the deceased was a doctor who successfully found the cure for cancer. Despite this breakthrough, the funding was pulled…or so it seems. The doctor was paid to bury the cure, but refused and was murdered. The formula for said cure is hidden in his tablet, which Max and Charlie have, hence why everyone’s after them. While this may not sound too complicated, it’s played out as a jumbled mess. Director Steven Brill has no handle on the twists, throwing them at the screen without any caution or reason.
Another spoiler awaits for those who still want to see this film and attempt to be taken in by its “mystery.” It turns out Max has cancer, which is why he’s been so adamant about saving the cure. Everything has been purposely orchestrated by him: he knew the identities of the men, stealing them to find the formula. This reveal is meant to give the film some dramatic heft, but feels cheap and tacked on. We’re supposed to feel sympathy for Max, but wind up feeling insulted that they’d throw the cancer card on us randomly.
Steven Brill was so lost in the convoluted mess that was the story that he struggled to incorporate the humor. Therefore, gags involving penis piercings, gigantic saggy breasts, and a homoerotic henchman feel out of place. Even Max’s expertise gunplay and hand-to-hand combat comes out of nowhere, with the excuse being he learned everything while in the police academy (he never became a cop because he failed the psychology exam). The real reason is for Sandler to play out his action hero fantasy, which he already did in “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan,” which was a much funnier film than this!
The only saving grace, and I use that term lightly, is David Spade, surprisingly enough. David Spade is known for playing smarmy douchebags and annoying cretins, but plays against type this time around as the mild-mannered Charlie. I know Spade has always referred to Joe Dirt as his nice character, but he was always bogged down by stereotypical redneck humor. Here, he gets to show a nice side of him, with one wanting to root for Charlie. Too bad he’s stuck in a lousy film, one in which has you rooting for the end credits to arrive, not for Charlie to get his happy ending.
Final Rating: D