‘Hubie Halloween’ is Adam Sandler’s bovine, stratospherically unfunny vendetta against the Academy Awards committee who omitted his nomination for his tour-de-force performance in last year’s ‘Uncut Gems’.
Systematically, between Canteen Boy, The Waterboy and Little Nicky, Sandler is pollinating a franchise of intolerably slack-jawed yokels on the spectrum. As per usual, Sandler has leveraged his clout for puerile celebrity cameos like Ben Stiller as a mustachioed asylum orderly with the flick’s most dadaistic, juvenile line (“Pee-pee while you sleepy”) and a plasticine Ray Liotta haranguing Hubie (Sandler) with a pubic nickname.
Sandler mongrelizes his dialogue in a nearly indecipherable Walter Brennan-like lisp that is no longer goofily addlepated. It is more of an affront to the mentally hebephrenic community much like Jerry Lewis’ tomfoolery in hindsight. It’s quite a dejected character study to kibitz an ultrabroad, asthmatic, middle-aged ignoramus on a preteen bike while being tyrannized by delinquents.
Projectile vomit, lawn urination and fecal matter on periodicals are the tastelessly scatological gags in Steve Brill’s paintbrush which align directly with Sandler’s lowest-common-denominator sense of humor. The freshly faddish joke that Harley Quinn is the costume de jeur for zaftig news anchors and women in general, is bungled into pestle dust ad infinitum.
Happily, in opposition to Sandler’s other Netflix forays, ‘Hubie’ is an exemplar of brevity with a running time below two hours. However, the running gag of Sandler loudly shrieking at prankster jump scares does feel like a listless eternity. The throes of coquettish behavior from the alliterative Violet Valentine (Julie Bowen) towards Hubie is insincerely fallacious despite Bowen’s sexpot efforts.