La Ron S. Readus
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Hubie Halloween: A Monster Mash of Morals (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2020-10-16 20:00:02 +0000 UTCYes, I’m talking about the good things that came out of an Adam Sandler Netflix movie. Big whoop. Wanna fight about it?
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I admit, Readers. I haven’t really seen them for myself, but hasn’t stopped me hearing about the quote-unquote “travesties” Adam Sandler's original films he made for Netflix thanks to the deal that originally consisted of 4 films and worth 250 million.
I only decided to catch his sixth out of the now 8 movies for the streaming service in the spirit of the holiday, Hubie Halloween
/It’s a comedy about a man named Hubie who reserves himself as being the Halloween safety monitor for his infamous hometown of Salem, Massachusetts. But THIS Halloween is -- of course -- unlike any other./
I saw the trailer for it one day on Adam Sandler’s Twitter account and immediately quote retweeted it with the line “Sandler Scared Stupid.” Because that’s pretty much the vibe that this movie gave off to me.
Ernest Scared Stupid -- pretty much like the other Ernest movies -- was a dumb fun comedy made in the spirit of Halloween and has since become a cult classic.
And depending on who you are and how old you are, it might have been your official introduction to the late great Eartha Kitt.
/Not mine, though. Mine was Living Single./
Nevertheless, this was the first Adam Sandler Netflix movie I decided to watch, and it was pretty much what I anticipated. A dumb fun comedy made with his friends and recent Disney Channel alumni in the spirit of Halloween.
/It’s also WAY less gross than Eight Crazy Nights, which I greatly appreciated/
And if you’re fans of Adam Sandler’s movies -- more specifically, his earlier comedies if you’re gonna be THAT type of person -- you can definitely see nods and homages to them.
Hubie is CLEARLY a different take on his Waterboy character Bobby Bouchet. Unique enough for it to feel different and exclusive to the story the movie is telling, but similar enough to catch the familiarity.
His mom was definitely one of those points of familiarity, and also one of the funniest bits of the movie when it first started up
/I wasn’t expecting to laugh at the first sight of an 80-something year old woman wearing a Boner Donor T-Shirt, but here we are!/
It also wouldn’t be an Adam Sandler movie without his friends in it.
Kevin James, Rob Schneider, Steve Buscemi. They all played pretty humorous takes on old Halloween movie tropes in the form of the small-town sheriff, Michael Meyes and the werewolf respectively
/So much so that the thought of it initially being a comedy parody of Halloween initially crossed my mind when I started to see shot similarities/
And while there is in fact a “bad guy” in the movie and there are shots of people “getting got,”
/It surprisingly leads up to a series of pretty dope messages at the end of the day/
Especially if you take in to consideration that it has a rating of PG-13 and there’s a well-known teen-slash-young adult cast in it
Here’s what I was initially expecting from this movie after watching the trailer for the first time.
A small town loser who lives with his mother -- because apparently that’s still a thing people associate with being a loser -- who constantly throws himself to the wolves by volunteering to chaperone all of the town’s Halloween activities every year because of his love for the holiday, uses the weirdness he’s constantly being made fun of to save said town from a dangerous threat in a way that’ll have the citizens that once heckled him throughout his life start showing him more respect
It’s a pretty simple plot, and, with a few substitutions here and there, is a scenario we’ve seen Sandler play before.
But one thing I’ll give Hubie Halloween credit for is how it was able to use the family-friendly model the movie and its rating were aiming for and include multiple messages in its story that all compliment each other and didn’t feel forced in the narrative.
First things first: The movie by nature is very anti-bully, and it displays it in various ways.
As you can imagine, Hubie is the prime target of this bullying considering the type of person he’s known around town for
/And it’s even illustrated in the fact that over his time living in Salem, he’s developed SUPER keen reflexes that allows him to dodge damn near everything that’s thrown at him. Even when they’re not in his peripheral areas!/
He’s dopey, he scares easily, he’s always reporting the most simplest things to the town Sheriff out of genuine concern of Salem
/But he’s also one of the nicest guys IN Salem because of it, and always looks out for others over himself/
/This is why his mother does what she does in the movie, because she can see the things Hubie deals with on an everyday basis -- ESPECIALLY around Halloween -- and knows that he doesn’t deserve it. It’s truly a one-two combo of always being true to yourself in the face of adversity/
Which leads to the next moral the movie tries to instill; gaining the courage to stand up for yourself and make the moves you always wanted to make
/This is partially done in the form of Violet Valentine; Hubie’s high school crush that he never had the courage to ask out during those days or even admit his feelings to./
And despite her feeling the same way for the longest time, she ALSO never had the courage to admit them. Instead, waiting for him to break the ice.
Now, I know what you’re thinking:
But La’Ron, all this is shown through the eyes of Hubie. If this movie is aimed at young kids, how is a child, a tween, or a teenager gonna relate to the moral awakening of a 50-something year old man?
Oh, that’s easy! They do it by having a couple of the kids in the movie go through the same struggles.
The most prominent one being Violet’s adopted son Tommy, played by Stranger Things’ Noah Schnapp.
/He’s not necessarily dopey, but he’s frequently bullied by upperclassmen at his High School. And when we’re introduced to him he does his best to try and appear cool in front of his crush while with his sisters./
/Then the next time we see him and his crush at the Halloween barn dance, he tries to keep up the “cool guy” routine but soon realizes that it’s better to just be himself/
/And as we learn immediately afterward, Tommy’s variant of being himself means standing up to bullies and helping people out when they need it./
Its in seeing how this Monster Mash of morals are implemented in the storytelling of this movie -- even if it’s just meant to be Sandler and his friends goofing off for 2 hours, that made me realize exactly why I was thankful that THIS Netflix Original was the first of his that I’ve seen, and helped deliver a truth to me about them as a whole that probably others need to realize.
Hubie Halloween, like the majority of the other movies he made for Netflix that’s part of their 250 million dollar deal, is Sandler’s way of having fun with making movies again.
It’s because he has the opportunity to do whatever he wants without having to worry about criticism affecting the box office numbers like with his other productions immediately before it, that we have performances like the ones he delivered with Reign Over Me and Uncut Gems.
Because even with the Netflix Originals, sometimes you get diamonds in the rough like Hubie Halloween ended up being.
True, it’s no Happy Gilmore or Billy Madison. Hell, it’s not even Little Nicky.
/But through his decision to put together a Halloween script starring himself and his friends and not have to worry that hard about public reception like Jack & Jill or any of his other comedies others deemed sub-par, he was able to not only make an Ernest Scared Stupid for the 21st Century, but also create something fun in the spirit of Halloween that’s age appropriate enough to attempt to deliver a message about not being a jerk while staying true to yourself. And if Adam Sandler was gonna deliver this message in any of his newer films, I’m kinda glad it's through Hubie Halloween./
So with that being said Readers, your homework assignment for the day:
If you’ve seen it, write in the comment section below what YOU thought of the Netflix Original movie Hubie Halloween.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, any movie you’ve seen -- past or present -- that you were pleasantly surprised that it ended up being a decent family film with well-delivered messages.
Whichever one you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts!
