Bad Trip: Despite Lauren Lapkus being game for anything, "Wrong Missy" does no one any favors

The Wrong Missy (2020)

90 min.

Release Date: May 13, 2020 (Netflix)

A vacation to Hawaii with a movie built around it, “The Wrong Missy” must be a Happy Madison production. The seventh-and-counting co-deal with Netflix—and the second without Adam Sandler in front of the camera—this aggressively raunchy and anarchic but mostly unfunny lark doesn’t even have the decency to like any of its characters or book many laughs while the cast and crew were off having a blast. Alas, director Tyler Spindel (2018’s “Father of the Year”) and writers Chris Pappas & Kevin Barnett (2016’s “The Do-Over”) get too close to causing PTSD by echoing 2007’s Farrelly Brothers-directed remake “The Heartbreak Kid” rather than 2008's "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," and no wonder, as that miserable, heartless comedy and this one share a writer (Kevin Barnett). In charge of being the clown rather than Sandler or even lead David Spade, the game, comedically brazen force-of-nature Lauren Lapkus keeps it from being a completely unpleasant disaster, even if Missy herself is a train wreck wherever she goes.

David Spade is bland and no fun in straight-man mode as recently broken-hearted bank exec Tim who, about to leave for a company retreat in Hawaii, ends up paying for a texting mix-up. Instead of inviting dream girl Melissa (Molly Sims), an ex-Miss Maryland whom he met, had drinks and bonded over James Patterson novels with at the airport, Tim accidentally messages another Melissa (Lauren Lapkus), a crass, uninhibited, generally obnoxious Jackie-of-all-trades who met Tim on a horrendous blind date. Once Tim and his wrong plus-one land on the island, this Missy wreaks havoc, but maybe she’s a softie at heart.

“The Wrong Missy” is not just a lightly silly, harmlessly dumb comedy, or else it might have registered as likable. Missy is such a broad, insufferable creation that it’s a shame Lauren Lapkus exhibits a go-for-broke fearlessness in what she’s asked to do, amping up the bull-in-a-china-shop antics to full-blast mode. One feels a bit bad for the performer, making her a punching bag, but Lapkus is certainly going for it. In a way, the Missy character is the inverse of the Malin Akerman character from the aforementioned “The Heartbreak Kid,” who seemed normal and then became obnoxious. Like when she falls off a seaside cliff, Missy never seems like a human being, just a screenplay’s inconsistently written slapstick construct made up of every worst blind-date trait and quirk. And yet, when Tim suddenly has feelings for Missy out of nowhere and we are supposed to root for them as a couple, the film’s 180-degree turn into sweetness feels like an apology. It's a nice sentiment that people can change, but that kind of resolution comes off annoyingly forced and disingenuous as if "The Wrong Missy" was shot with the wrong ending. It’s quite something when Nick Swardson doesn’t get stuck playing the most annoying person in a movie. 

Grade: D +