3265. The Wrong Missy (2020)

Starring: David Spade, Lauren Lapkus, Nick Swardson

Director: Tyler Spindel

Running Time: 90 mins

The Wrong Missy is an American film about a man who accidentally invites a woman he once met on a disastrous blind date for a luxurious Hawaiian getaway, having thought he was texting the girl of his dreams.

I didn’t expect all that much from The Wrong Missy, but I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Although nothing particularly out of the ordinary for a Happy Madison production, the film is surprisingly likable despite its propensity for gross-out humour and cartoonish performances, even delivering some properly good laughs from time to time.

That doesn’t mean that The Wrong Missy is non-stop hilarity from start to finish, but it’s at least not an unbearable watch, as has often proved the case with many films from the company famous for the likes of Jack And Jill, That’s My Boy, You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, Grown Ups, etc. etc.

One common trend in that list of films is Adam Sandler, who’s not in The Wrong Missy. Sandler has his strengths, but I think having David Spade in the male lead works to the film’s advantage, as it allows a little more freedom to Lauren Lapkus to go wild with the film’s main comic performance.

Rather than featuring what would have been a battle of who can be the loudest between Sandler and Lapkus, Spade works nicely as an awkward everyman who accidentally puts himself into hell in paradise when he invites the woman from a nightmare date on a romantic getaway.

Lapkus is the star of the show, however, and she manages to tread the awfully fine line between infuriatingly stupid and irritating comedy and surprisingly likable and even sometimes heartfelt acting. Her character isn’t immensely interesting, but Lapkus gives it her all, and that really shines through in this movie.

Where The Wrong Missy does fall down, however, is in the frequency of its strong jokes. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good laughs here, but they amount to a total of about three or four. And what’s worse is that they’re spaced out through the entire movie.

As a result, while The Wrong Missy is never a particularly annoying watch, it is an often boring one, and never really does enough to keep you engaged in what is effectively a predictable series of calamities centred around the antics of Lapkus’ chaotic lead performance.

You’ll chuckle from time to time, but I wouldn’t say that The Wrong Missy is the most entertaining way to spend 90 minutes of your life. It’s certainly not the worst, but there really isn’t much you’ll get from it that you didn’t already have at the start. So, that’s why I’m giving the film a 6.7 overall.