HUBIE HALLOWEEN Offers Mild Halloween Fun

Townspeople of Salem begin to disappear on Halloween night, and it’s up to a dorky deli employee, named Hubie, to save them all. Written by and starring Adam Sandler, Hubie Halloween is nothing spectacular in terms of its story and execution, but it certainly provides some light humor against a nostalgic Halloween backdrop.

Premiering on Netflix earlier this month, the film delivers a mixed bag. It’s certainly not anything groundbreaking for Sandler, but against his other Netflix offerings, it’s probably the one that’s most fun. Hubie is very similar to Sandler’s character in The Waterboy; weird voice and all. I do wish he would break out of this routine of having his goofy characters speak with such an unnatural tone. We can buy a character being halfwitted, without them having to be completely cartoonish.

The script is also extremely childish, in terms of some of its joke material. I mean, Sandler is a man in his 50s who is still writing fart jokes. So I am starting to expect a little bit more maturity to his writing. I think you can write a script that balances a playful tone for a mature audience. At times, I couldn’t tell who the target audience for this film was. Whoever it is, they don’t need to be written down to, as recent Happy Madison productions have seemed to be doing.

But I do think it has a good amount of redeeming qualities, enough to justify watching it, at least once. For starters, it has a ton of cameos that made it exciting to watch. Expect to see frequent Sandler collaborators such as Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, Rob Schneider, with a few other Saturday Night Live alums. As well as a few callbacks to earlier Sandler-movie characters.

Maybe I’m also just really into any sort of Halloween aesthetic, but I did love how the scenes were dressed with the perfect suburban decorated lawns. And I did find the continuous joke about popular costumes being overdone, and a ridiculously zany haunted house scene, to be some of its highlights.

You won’t be blown away by its story, the acting, or anything really. But if you’re looking for a mindless film to give you some Halloween feels, I say check it out. I’ve watched some pretty bad films during my 31 Days of Halloween, and this was at least not that bad.