Sextuplets

[StevePulaski]

Sextuplets (2019)
Directed by: Michael Tiddes

Brothers Alan and Russell (both played by Marlon Wayans) evade the police in the vehicle from the TV series The Rockford Files in Sextuplets.

Rating: ★½

I'm willing to wager there has never been a more consistent crop of failures from an actor/director duo than Marlon Wayans and Michael Tiddes, and if there has been or will be, I hope I don't muster the stamina to find out for myself. Sextuplets marks the fifth abhorrent misfire for the men as they continue their streak of crass concepts with low-brow humor. If nothing else, it gives my sparse list of worst films of 2019 another add. Perhaps I'm getting too soft as I get older.

Indeed, the film's flimsy concept involves the committed, physical comedy actor Marlon Wayans portraying a total of seven characters — a tall order in any film regardless of overall quality. He likely went into the project hoping to muster up the same brand of zeal that Eddie Murphy did in The Nutty Professor films and even the maligned but still commendable Norbit. But Wayans can't even touch Norbit in terms of overall quality as this is a genuinely poor film that mistakes stereotypes for substantive characters while cloaking all its lame-brained tomfoolery under a thin veil that family is everything. It might not be another parody film from Wayans/Tiddes (A Haunted House, its sequel, and Fifty Shades of Black) but it carries the same weight.

The film revolves around Alan (played by Marlon Wayans, as is about half the cast, including all the siblings), a man who is on the verge of having a baby with his pregnant wife (Bresha Webb). After getting paternity leave from his boss (Molly Shannon in an utterly embarrassing performance), Alan begins to wonder about his own family roots. He was raised in foster care his entire life after his mother gave him up for adoption, and his lack of a family leaves his father-in-law (Glynn Turman) suspect of his ability to be a husband, much less a father. He agrees to do Alan a favor and dig up his adoption papers, leading to the discovery that a woman named Lynette Spellman is his mother.

Upon arriving at her home, Alan is informed Lynette is deceased by his brother Russell, a lispy oddball with a hankering for cereal. Further discovery reveals to both brothers that they are two of six children, all but Russell put up for adoption when they were babies. This leads to the two men tracking down the other siblings: Dawn, an obnoxious and abrasive stripper currently incarcerated, Ethan, a flashy, woeful pimp stereotype, the elusive Baby Pete, and Jaspar, an elusive man who was condemned to being directly raised by the government as an infant.

As you can infer, writers Wayans, Mike Glock, and Rick Alvarez (who worked on past films with Wayans and Tiddes) make no attempt to paint realistic characters for Alan's many siblings. They are cheap, black stereotypes that only come off as clones of Marlon Wayans that belong in a miserably misguided comedy sketch, all equally insufferable. If you can even bring yourself to consider the positives during what amounts to a 93 minute slog of situational schlock, you'll find that the technology (on what I assume was a fairly low budget) looks quite good and Wayans hasn't lost a beat when it comes to being a tremendous, limber performer. The hair and makeup, especially on Dawn, is manicured nicely, and the editing of the same actor portraying multiple characters in the same shot is absolutely seamless.

But beyond that, there is nothing of substance here. Some quirky details include frequent references to 70s TV shows, due to Russell's bizarre fixation on Mork and Mindy, for one, on top of Alan and Russell's undying love of The Rockford Files — right down to the climax involving a car chase in the program's trademark '74 Pontiac, driven by James Garner. These eclectic inclusions try to make Sextuplets interesting on a referential level, but anyone expecting real humor to derive from their presence will be sorely mistaken. This film has fewer than six laughs from the combined half-dozen siblings.

The highest compliment I can give Sextuplets outside of its technical capabilities and my albeit waning admiration for Marlon Wayans? It's free with a Netflix subscription.

My review of A Haunted House: stevethemovieman.proboards.com/thread/3531/haunted-house
My review of A Haunted House 2: stevethemovieman.proboards.com/thread/4341/haunted-house-2
My review of Fifty Shades of Black: stevethemovieman.proboards.com/thread/5039/shades-black
My review of Naked: stevethemovieman.proboards.com/thread/5710/2017

Starring: Marlon Wayans, Bresha Webb, Glynn Turman, Molly Shannon, and Michael Ian Black. Directed by: Michael Tiddes.