Review: Netflix’s ‘The Wrong Missy’ is an Adam Sandler comedy without Adam Sandler

“The Wrong Missy” is the latest movie for Netflix from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison production shop and bears all the hallmarks of what that relationship implies, for good and for ill. Lighthearted and willfully insubstantial, with a certain lazy ease, the comedy first and foremost looks like it made for a delightful time in Hawaii for all involved.

David Spade plays Tim Morris, still pining over his lost fiancée (Sarah Chalke) when he goes on an arranged blind date with a woman named Melissa (Lauren Lapkus) who turns out to be an antic, eccentric, unpredictable handful. Tim soon meets another Melissa (Molly Sims) in passing at the airport and feels a deeper connection. Before a corporate retreat to Hawaii, he means to invite Sims’ Melissa but texts Lapkus’ Melissa by mistake. By the time he realizes the mix-up, it’s too late. But as the Melissa he got — who goes by Missy — tears her way through one mortifying, unsettling interaction after another, Tim begins to actually like her.

Directed by Tyler Spindel, who previously directed Spade in 2018’s “Father of the Year,” from a script by Chris Pappas and Kevin Barnett, who wrote the 2016 Spade-Sandler vehicle “The Do-Over,” the new project has a familiar and familial feel to it. Though Adam Sandler’s name does not actually appear on “The Last Missy,” his influence dominates the movie.

Sandler stalwarts such as Rob Schneider, Nick Swardson and Jonathan Loughran all appear in supporting roles. Jackie Sandler, Adam Sandler’s wife, has a significant role as Spade’s main inter-office rival. Sadie and Sunny Sandler, Adam and Jackie’s daughters, make a brief appearance and the names of assorted other Sandler family members are scattered in the film’s credits. Rapper Vanilla Ice and wrestler Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoai have cameos as well.

The sweet, timid Tim makes for something of a change of pace for Spade from the dirtbags and louche sleazeballs that are more typical for him. But that also leads to him leaning a bit too far into the character’s Sandler-esque nice-guy-ness, tipping into a saccharine flatness.

The movie really belongs to Lapkus, who makes the most of the opportunity to deeply commit to her character’s outsized personality, pushing the physical comedy and inappropriateness to extremes. (The film’s funniest, most savage jokes are when Lapkus repeatedly makes fun of Spade’s hair and age.)

“The Wrong Missy” is a lightweight throwaway, the kind of movie it is difficult to suggest one actually choose to watch, but if your algorithm somehow lands on it provides a certain harmless diversion.