The Wrong Missy

In the weird, stagnant blur of May 2020, when the outside world felt like a distant memory and my primary social interaction was nodding at the delivery guy through a window, Netflix dropped The Wrong Missy. It arrived exactly when our collective bar for entertainment had shifted; we didn’t need a cinematic masterpiece, we needed a loud, colorful distraction that didn’t require us to think about epidemiology. I watched it on a Tuesday afternoon while eating a bowl of cereal that was definitely past its expiration date, and honestly, the crunch of the stale flakes perfectly matched the chaotic energy on screen.

Produced by Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison shop, this is a film that exists because of the "streaming algorithm" era. It’s designed to be clicked on, binged, and then replaced in your brain by the next shiny thumbnail. Yet, beneath the standard-issue raunch and the tropical Hawaii backdrop, there’s something fascinatingly feral about it that separates it from the usual direct-to-video-style fluff.

The Lauren Lapkus Power Hour

The premise is a classic comedy of errors: Tim Morris (David Spade) meets the woman of his dreams, Melissa (Molly Sims), in an airport. He thinks he’s texting her to join him at a corporate retreat in Hawaii, but he’s actually messaging "Hell" Missy (Lauren Lapkus), a blind date from his past who is essentially a human hurricane in a denim jacket.

Let’s be clear: this movie belongs entirely to Lauren Lapkus. If you’ve seen her on Comedy Bang! Bang! or her various podcast appearances, you know she’s a shapeshifter, but here she’s let off the leash entirely. Lauren Lapkus is basically what would happen if a Looney Tunes character was granted sentient life and a severe caffeine addiction. She is loud, invasive, and physically reckless. Whether she’s performing a drunken shark-jump or accidentally inducing a seizure in a business rival, she commits to the bit with a terrifying level of intensity.

David Spade, meanwhile, plays the straight man with his signature dry, "I’m too old for this" exhaustion. It’s a role he’s perfected over decades, but here he feels genuinely overwhelmed. This movie is effectively a ninety-minute endurance test for David Spade’s sanity. You can see the genuine fear in his eyes during some of the physical gags, and it works because it grounds the absurdity.

A Masterclass in Cringe-Comedy Pacing

Director Tyler Spindel (who, in classic Happy Madison fashion, is Sandler’s nephew) doesn't reinvent the wheel here. The cinematography by Theo van de Sande captures the saturated blues and greens of Hawaii, making the film look like a high-end vacation brochure, which stands in hilarious contrast to the absolute carnage Missy is wreaking.

The humor is a relentless barrage of "did they really just do that?" moments. It leans heavily into the "cringe" category of contemporary comedy—the kind that makes you want to hide behind a pillow while simultaneously peeking through your fingers. There’s a scene involving a psychic and a very misplaced hand that feels like it was written specifically to see how far the Netflix censors would let them go.

The supporting cast is populated by the usual Happy Madison suspects. Nick Swardson shows up as an HR nightmare who is more interested in corporate gossip than actual human resources, and Geoff Pierson plays the hard-nosed CEO with the right amount of gravitas to make the nonsense around him feel impactful. Even Jackie Sandler pops up, maintaining the "family business" vibe that defines this era of production. It’s a comfortable ensemble, the kind of cast where you can tell everyone had a blast on set between takes, likely drinking Mai Tais off-camera.

The Streaming Relic of the Pandemic Era

Looking at The Wrong Missy now, it feels like a specific artifact of the late 2010s/early 2020s streaming pivot. It’s a movie that doesn't care about the theatrical box office; it cares about "minutes watched." Because of that, it doesn't have the polish of a mid-90s studio comedy like Tommy Boy (1995), but it has a weird, improvisational freedom. Much of the dialogue feels like Lauren Lapkus was told "just go crazy until we tell you to stop," and in an era of highly controlled, franchise-driven media, that kind of messy spontaneity is almost refreshing.

The film eventually tries to find a "heart" in the final act, attempting to convince us that Tim and Missy actually belong together. It’s the weakest part of the script because the movie has spent so much time establishing that Missy is a literal danger to society. But hey, it’s a romantic comedy. We aren't here for psychological realism; we’re here to see David Spade fall off a cliff.

It’s easy to dismiss these Happy Madison Netflix joints as "content," but The Wrong Missy earns its keep through sheer, unadulterated commitment to the gag. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a loud Hawaiian shirt: it’s gaudy, it’s a bit much, and it’s definitely not for everyone, but in the right setting (and perhaps with the right expiration-date cereal), it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Ultimately, this is a delivery system for Lauren Lapkus’s comedic genius wrapped in a standard rom-com tortilla. It won't win any awards, and it probably won't be remembered as a "classic" in twenty years, but it succeeded in its primary mission: making me forget about the world for 90 minutes. If you’re in the mood for something that values a high joke-density over logic, you could do a lot worse than hitting play on this one. Just maybe double-check your contacts list before you send that next invite.