Search icon

Movies & TV

03rd Aug 2019

Sextuplets proves that Netflix still has no idea what it is doing when it comes to movies

Rory Cashin

sextuplets

The unfunniest comedy of all time? Discuss.

It wasn’t that long again when the term “Direct To Video” was essentially a death-sentence for a movie’s quality.

Should a movie skip the cinema and go DTV, then there was a 99% chance it was a terrible, terrible movie.

We mention this because Netflix have released a trailer for their new “comedy” Sextuplets, and…. yikes.

YIKES.

Clip via Netflix

Did you laugh? Even once? Because we sure didn’t.

It comes from the same director as A Haunted House, Fifty Shades Of Black, and Naked, all staring Marlon Wayans, all scoring 10% or less on Rotten Tomatoes.

This one looks like that director and Marlon Wayans sat down and watched Norbit, and The Nutty Professor, and Little Man, and decided to remake them all in one go.

It is the kind of movie that should, by rights, go DTV, but thanks to Netflix, it will get an equal marketing push to any and all of their other original movies.

Clearly Netflix knows what it is doing when it comes to original programming – phrases like “Netflix and chill” don’t come about for no reason, as the streaming service is essentially the reason why ‘binge-watching’ is now in the dictionary – but when it comes to original movies, they still seem lost at sea.

Their first two movies, both arriving in late 2015, were the Oscar-hopeful Beasts Of No Nation (which wasn’t as good as anyone expected), and the joke-free Adam Sandler western The Ridiculous Six (which was exactly as good as everyone expected).

Since then, they have managed to pull in some big-name directors – Duncan Jones (Mute), Gareth Evans (Apostle), Paul Greengrass (22 July), Dan Gilroy (Velvet Buzzsaw), J.C. Chandor (Triple Frontier), David Ayer (Bright) – but none of them brought their A-game.

There have been a few exceptions, with The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, The Meyerowitz Stories, and the Oscar-winning Roma all proving that Netflix are still capable of recognising good projects, but weighed against the likes of The Cloverfield Paradox, The Do-Over, or Murder Mystery, it doesn’t seem like the same quality control that they have for their shows is present when it comes to their movies.

Sure, Murder Mystery is apparently Netflix’s most-watched original movie to date, replacing previous record-holder Bird Box, the former of which has already been mostly forgotten by everyone who has seen it, and the latter only to be remembered by being a popular meme for the first few months of 2019.

Things could be looking up going forward, thanks to the likes of The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh directs Meryl Streep in true-life political thriller), Six Underground (Michael Bay directs Ryan Reynolds in assassin-themed action-thriller), Red Notice (the most expensive project on Netflix to date), and, of course, Scorsese’s The Irishman.

But if Netflix aren’t careful and don’t enforce a stricter policy on their content, we could soon be referring to these projects as Direct-To-Netflix, and people will hear these movies are DTN and just assume the worst.

LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Conor Sketches | Tiger Woods loves Ger Loughnane and cosplaying as Charles LeClerc