The Wrong Missy (2020)

The Wrong Missy arrives from the Happy Madison factory, directed by Tyler Spindel, and released directly to Netflix in the spring of 2020. David Spade plays a Portland businessman who texts the wrong Melissa and drags an unhinged stranger to a Hawaiian corporate retreat. The premise is ancient. The execution is greasy. It is the sort of film that exists because a streaming service needed content and a comedian needed a paycheck, and both parties understood the arrangement without discussion.

For the purposes of cultural classification, the film offers almost nothing to catalogue. The cast is largely white, with Roman Reigns appearing in a brief bit part that functions as set dressing more than representation. There are no queer characters. Race is never a subject. The climate does not exist in this universe, nor does the corporate retreat inspire a single thought about capital. The female lead exists to be humiliated and objectified, and the female antagonist is literally nicknamed the Barracuda, so we can set aside any feminist reading. The film opens with Missy drugging Tim into unconsciousness and sexually assaulting him, played for laughs, which is a comedic tradition with a long and undistinguished pedigree. None of this is offered as commentary. It is simply what the film finds funny.

There is no sermon here, no message, no progressive scaffolding, and that absence is itself the only notable thing about the film's politics. Happy Madison has never pretended otherwise. The result is a comedy of pure id, delivered to 59 million households, which says something about us that no amount of analysis will improve.