Sextuplets (2019) - Movie Review

Why this premise still a thing that people think is a good idea? A comedic actor reaches a certain level of notoriety that, in order to make bank on their presence on-screen, someone decides that the best way to go is to make more of the actor to spread around, i.e. double-casting. It’s essentially the textbook example of ‘too much of a good thing’, and what makes it worse is that it is rarely if ever implemented by comedians who are tolerable all on their own, let alone in multitudes.

Eddie Murphy did it with the Nutty Professor movies (first one was alright, but c'mon, The Klumps was pretty dire stuff), Adam Sandler infamously tried it in Jack & Jill, and the whole enterprise has become such a cliché that it even made for one of Tropic Thunder’s gag trailers. It’s an idea that shouldn’t exist in a modern release to begin with, so you can imagine how well it turns out in the hands of perennial shite script magnet Marlon Wayans.

It isn’t so much that every iteration of the titular Sextuplets are all caricatures of caricatures, from Russell’s TV rerun obsessed shut-in to Dawn’s Madeaisms (one of the few times when name-dropping Tyler Perry actually sets expectations higher than what we actually get), to Baby Pete giving horrifying flashbacks to Marlon’s performance in Little Man. It’s not even that the performances are outright bad as, for as pencil-thin as Marlon’s understanding of character goes, they all feel like individual presences on-screen that are visualised adequately without any conspicuous CG wonkiness.

No, rather, it’s because the family dynamics here are fucking dreadful. It goes beyond merely being unfunny and right into sabotaging the film’s entire point regarding family. When they aren’t dipping into emotional blackmail, they’re inflicting the proper stuff in how the siblings keep strong-arming Alan into doing what they want, up to and including tricking him into giving up a kidney. No matter how hard it tries to wring sentimental feels out of the audience, in a manner that makes Happy Madison productions look subtle by comparison, it never escapes the fact that its depiction of family is made of pure joy repellent.

There’s also the recurring problem of the story structure, or what little there is to be found of one in the finished product. Between Mike Glock and Rick Alvarez’s scripting, and countless bits of Marlon riffing over the dead air that makes up a not-surprising heft of the running time, the film’s premise seems simple enough: A road trip with each of Alan’s siblings as the pit stops. It’s admittedly a decent approach to the main concept, as it allows for some breathing room rather than just dumping all six of them together at once, but it’s one that doesn’t hold together for very long.

By the halfway point, once we’re introduced to retro-pimp Ethan and his attempts to trick Alan’s wife into thinking he’s Alan (in one of the dumbest plot points in a film already choking itself with them), any feasible through-line just disappears. It stops even pretending that any of this was planned out and just lets the chaos reign, a serious problem when said chaos consists mainly of Marlon bickering with himself for minutes on end. It’s quite a feat to take a production concept that has already past its sell-by date and somehow manage to make it look even worse, but if anyone could do it, it’s the numbnuts who somehow failed to make fun of Fifty frickin’ Shades.

I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but it seems like Marlon Wayans has found a new low. Aided as he may be by his working relationship with director Michael Tiddes, and cinematographer Don Burgess finding a production more embarrassing than Monster Trucks to be involved in, this needless throwback to one of the worst cinematic tropes in history only serves to prove why the idea cannot be taken seriously anymore. If Tyler Perry doesn’t end up running the idea entirely into the ground all on his own, surely Marlon’s efforts here will be enough to kill off for good. Or, at the very least, leave it buried until someone with actual talent can give an earnest attempt to make it work again.