Several times, as I watched Hubie Halloween, when I found myself losing concentration slightly, I wondered how would it feel to be Adam Sandler.

He is an actor who has enjoyed a long and popular career whose films combined have grossed over 2 billion dollars at the box office. However, it should be taken into account that, not only that most of his films have been universally panned, but also that, despite averaging one film per year, only Hotel Transylvania 2 & 3 and Pixels have had a wide premiere on the big screen since 2015 (the rest of his films have premiered on Netflix -after a very lucrative deal for Sandler- or have had a limited release).

It would be easy to criticize Sandler from the point of view that he refuses to move from his comfort zone, only making perfunctorily written films in which he makes a variation of his usual shtick -each time being less and less funny- and some of his films seem to be an excuse for a paid holiday, since they are generally shot in exotic locations throughout the world (see Murder Mystery, The Do-Over, Blended or Just Go With It for further proof).

Furthermore, he has a knack to cast the same group of actors over and over again, which is not a problem with people like Steve Buscemi, Drew Barrymore or Jennifer Aniston, but is more troublesome with actors like Rob Schneider and Kevin James.      

However, like many other comedy actors, Sandler has ventured a few times with more mature and dramatic roles proving that he has the chops to do something else other than his usual and repetitive routine. Films like the delightfully quirky Punch Drunk Love (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who is a self-confessed Sandler fan), the dramatic Reign Over Me and most recently on The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) and Uncut Gems serve as an example of a talent that he chooses to use from time to time.

The issue with Sandler is that these, more serious, better made films are the exception in his filmography. They serve the function of some kind of a palate cleanser, only to demonstrate the fact that he can actually act. Given his success, it would be unexpected for an actor with Sandler’s popularity to abandon the comedies that have made him who he is, so a return to the features that have made him a star was to be expected.

Had he returned to normal with a film on the line of the awfully idiotic Jack and Jill would have been almost cruel to see, especially after his magnificent performance earlier this year in the Safdie Brothers nerve-wrecking picture that is Uncut Gems.     

Probably the best thing that could be said about Hubie Halloween is that Sandler’s return to business as usual is not hurtful to see, as the film itself is as harmless as a small puppy. The other best thing might be that, although it is a comedy made for the halloween season, which succeeds at being neither funny nor scary, it did manage to get a couple of chuckles out of me. However none of those chuckles came from Sandler, but from Steve Buscemi and Ray Liotta, both of them being the possible saving grace of the film, as they make the best out of their roles, in a cast that includes Julie Bowen, Maya Rudolph, Kevin James, Tim Meadows, June Squibb…  

The fact that Sandler’s character is an innocent, simple man living in Salem, concerned about safety and obeying the rules on the halloween celebrations, who also happens to be easily scared could have been funny in another film. With another script. In Hubie Halloween, Sandler spends the majority of the film screaming left, right and centre while the rest of the characters either laugh at him or through things at him -which he avoids with the agility of a Ninja and the credibility of a politician-.

The plot -so to speak- consists of him, running through Salem, being scared whilst trying to solve some mysterious disappearances after a man has escaped from the local mental institution. That is all. The plot in and on itself should not be a problem at all, the main issue is that everything is over explained for the audience. It is as if Hubie Halloween, was created as an experiment against the golden rule of writing “show don’t tell”, as everything -EVERYTHING- the characters think, say or do is described in great detail to avoid confusion in the audience. As if there was going to be any to begin with. 

I would not recommend anybody to see Hubie Halloween, unless they are interested on watching a film that, on its best moments manages to be barely tolerable, but never succeeds at being either funny or scary. All of that leaves me thinking that, sadly, this film was never intended to be any of those things. It is just another film on Sandler’s career, another paycheck and another occasion in which we might wonder how long is going to take him this time to do something good again.