Ms Right's all wrong, like the movie

Ms Right's all wrong, like the movie

Netflix's latest romcom fails to deliver on its promising premise

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Ms Right's all wrong, like the movie
David Spade and Nick Swardson in The Wrong Missy. (Photo © Netflix)

Tim, a lonely middle-aged guy, had a nightmarish blind date a few months ago, but later while travelling he stumbles upon the woman of his dreams at the airport, who happens to also have the name Missy. They're like a perfect match and their relationship quickly escalates through text messages. Tim wants to take this hot girl as his date to his corporate retreat on an island resort in Hawaii over the weekend, where he has to impress his boss for promotion, so he texts to invite her to come along and luckily she replies yes.

Things should go as smoothly as planned, however, when the past date from hell shows up at the airport on the day instead of the hot one, Tim quickly realises that he texted the invite to the wrong Missy. So Tim is stuck with this loud, inappropriate, socially tone-deaf girl for the whole weekend. And when this wrong Missy starts causing chaos on the trip, he knows that his perfect holiday getaway has now turned into a perfect disaster.

While the premise of The Wrong Missy, Netflix's latest original film, shows enough promise to be an interesting romcom, unfortunately the execution of this trainwreck of a story turns out to be painfully unfunny, predictable, distasteful and unbelievably annoying.

Directed by newcomer Tyler Spindel, The Wrong Missy is another effort by Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production company that's been releasing a number of comedies on Netflix over the past few years, like The Week Off, The Do-Over, Murder Mystery and many others. So it's no surprise to see a lot of usual suspects and familiar faces from many of Sandler's movies like David Spade, Rob Schneider, Jorge Garcia and Nick Swardson pop up in The Wrong Missy.

And after years of one generic film after the next, this is another Sandler-produced movie that is headache-inducing. Most of the film is slapstick humour and disturbing, sexually offensive jokes. Most of it is just a pure cringe-fest, with a lot of the stuff over the top and ridiculously silly.

As one of the main protagonists in The Do-Over alongside Sandler, here we get to see veteran comedian Spade return to streaming as Tim, a lead character. And he does just like he does in his 90s movies -- a typically awkward and dorky version of himself with those little snarky jabs here and there. While there's nothing wrong with that, there's nothing that stands out in his performance, either.

I have nothing against Lauren Lapkus, who plays "the wrong Missy". Though I may not have followed much of her previous work, I hear a lot of good things about her acting and her standup. But honestly, I find her in-your-face performance in The Wrong Missy to be the most annoying ever. It almost feels like you're watching Tom Green in that horrible 2001 comedy Freddy Got Fingered all over again.

Okay, I get that the comedy in this film would have Lapkus perform mental and physical extremes, channelling her innermost Jim Carrey and Tom Green from the 90s for the entirety of the movie -- tumbling down, tripping and bumping into things, getting drunk and wasted, acting maniacal, and most importantly, making everybody else embarrassed. But she just overdoes it, and there's not a shred of endearment within it. For example, there is a scene in which Tim wakes up in the middle of the night to find Missy giving him a handjob and even riding on top of him. I can't help but wonder what it would be like if the gender roles were reversed and Tim was on top of Missy, and she woke up and saw him sexually assaulting her. People would definitely go crazy over that.

So it's not your fault if you decide to stop in the middle of The Wrong Missy. It is indeed very generic and demonstrates bad comedic taste, but if you know what you're in for it gives just what you expect.

  • The Wrong Missy
  • Starring David Spade, Lauren Lapkus, Nick Swardson, Rob Schneider
  • Directed by Tyler Spindel
  • Now streaming on Netflix
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