From there, it's revealed that Charlie lives a sad-sack life, a fact depicted by the type of occupation-shaming that frequently crops up in these Sandler movies, wherein the idea of being the manager of a bank that resides inside a grocery store is The Do-Over's concept of being the biggest loser who ever lived. Plus, Charlie has two ungrateful kids and a wife who barely even notices he exists. Thus, to escape his doldrums, Max invites Charlie to spend a day with him on the lake. What seems like a serene time ends with Charlie waking up in a motel with Max delivering a bombshell: he's faked their deaths so they can start over with new identities. He's gotten these identities from two recently deceased guys, by the by.
That concept of comedic situations occurring whilst taking on new lives last for a good fifteen minutes, with a new storyline soon entering the picture revolving around a chemotherapy company wanting to kill Max and Charlie because the dudes who identities they stole were working on a cure for cancer that could put the company out of business. Double-crosses, unengaging action sequences and a plot that mistakes complexity for depth ensures. Oh, and poor Paula Patton is dragged into this mess as the ex-wife of one of the men Max and Charlie stole their identities from.
I suppose I should be grateful that the plot of this movie isn't quite as blatant of an excuse for Sandler and his cronies to just party around in exotic locations like Grown Ups 2, Just Go With It & Jack & Jill, though The Do-Over still finds time to allow Max and Charlie to live it up in Puerto Rico. From there, the laughs are in short supply and tedium comes at a steady clip. The one-note nature of Charlie (whose disposition as a loser is repeated ad nasueam throughout the film) robs him of the potential to become a fully formed character worth giving damn about while Max lies so frequently about his true nature that it's impossible to get a read on the guy. There's only one trait that the script (which is the rare screenplay for an Adam Sandler film that the actor didn't also write) gives Max and that he's a total bad-ass ladies man in any given scenario.
The Do-Over also decides to make the most of its TV-MA rating (the television equivalent to an MPAA R rating) by filling the film with nudity (all female), f-bombs and graphic violence, none of which generates even the lightest chuckle. Then again, considering this movie thinks the very concept of a burly biker being a homosexual is the very height of comedy, maybe it shouldn't come as a shock that the more adult material never coalesces into actually successful gags. Equally unsuccessful is its climactic turn into sentimentality, when Max's true true true (I forgot how many times he's revealed his "true" identity at this point) self is unveiled.
Probably the only aspect of this failure soaked adventure was the bizarre ubiquity of modern country songs. Recent tunes by Kenny Chesney, Thomas Rhett, Eric Church, The Zac Brown Band and The King Of Country himself George Strait have songs that crop up at various points in the story. Oh man, why'd ya have to drag good o'l George into this mess? That's just yet another sad aspect of this mean-spirited comedy that left me feeling more depressed than joyful. God help us all if the next two Adam Sandler movies in this Netflix partnership are equal to the level of quality seen in The Do-Over, let alone a step down.
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