Obligatory Bare Naked Ladies One Week Song Reference (The Week Of, 2018)

Kenny Lustig is a lower middle class Jewish dad whose daughter is engaged to the son of rich surgeon (and black) Kirby Cordice. The week before the wedding, Kenny is trying to set everything up to go perfectly.  Shockingly in a story like this…that is not happening.

There is certainly a potentially entertaining movie in the story.  But the weight of the cliches and the casting brings to much drag. Kenny has big ideas, but is trying to pull them off on a budget and hide just how tight money is.  He is constantly fighting with his wife, his family is overbearing but he and his daughter have a special bond. Is the massive fighting with his wife (played by Rachel Dratch) something that needs resolution? I don’t know…maybe? It is almost more like “This is an Adam Sandler movie, he needs another person to have shouting matches with”.

Rock’s Cordice has no apparent relationship to his ex-wife or his kids. He hates her new man, and just threw money at the kids. But the movie never does a good job of showing this relationship. But at the end, we are supposed to accept how much he has grown.  But from where???

We don’t really get much of a sense of any of the relationships.  A lot of the running gags feel like the film was originally envisioned as a writer pitch to Wes Anderson.  The quirky friend who offers to sleep with guys for her best friend’s sake, another friend who throws herself at the weird neighbor kid who has been obsessed Sandler’s daughter for years…they are all “quirky”…but here it just feels like a weird clash.

And the biggest problem is the casting.  Sandler and Rock are just not the right guys for these roles. They do not bring any real personality or life to their characters.  Kirby and Kenny are ill defined characters, relying on cliches…and neither actor does anything to make these characters feel like they are more than those cliches.

Heck, they don’t even really make use of the cliches that might give them some solid awkward comedy.  The only gag we really get from the Black and Jewish thing is one that…well, makes Kenny look pretty bad.  He sees two black guys walking by the house and invites the (rather confused) two in because he assumes they are members of Kirby’s family.

Nothing really seems able to save The Week Of from drowning in it’s own lack of creativity.