By Seth Lukas Hynes
The Wrong Missy
Starring David Spade, Lauren Lapkus and Molly Sims
Rated MA15+
Streaming allows you to curate your own entertainment more than ever before. This is a good thing, for the most part, but I was worried I wouldn’t get to see many bad films this year. Thankfully – or not – we have a disgusting doozy this week.
The Wrong Missy is a tedious, unfunny romantic comedy, but a few misguided scenes turn this into an utterly reprehensible film.
Corporate salesman Tim (David Spade) meets two women named Missy – mature, gentle Right Missy (Molly Sims) and brash, silly Wrong Missy (Lauren Lapkus) – and unwittingly invites the wrong Missy to his Hawaii work retreat.
Spade plays a charismatic straight-man, but the Wrong Missy of the title is relentlessly childish and annoying. Tim’s career sub-plot is vague and carries no urgency, and save for exactly nine well-timed gags (only four of which are decently funny), a mildly-clever scene of shadow puppetry and an amusingly cringe-worthy rap performance, the humour is loud and juvenile.
The Wrong Missy contains several scenes of sexual assault, including two scenes of Wrong Missy taking advantage of Tim while he’s asleep. These scenes kill any sympathy you might have for Wrong Missy and invalidate any positive development between them.
Bad comedies are painful enough, but any film that plays rape for laughs deserves condemnation.
