Maybe the reason the proliferation of incels still abounds has something to do with the false message that continues to be peddled by the likes of Adam Sandler, assuring that, eventually, after years of merciless bullying, you will be vindicated–suddenly embraced and appreciated by society. When that, of course, doesn’t happen (not even if you become a rich geek like Mark Zuckerberg), the rage flares up tenfold in place of the depression (“depression is anger turned inward,” after all). An incel is birthed from the ashes of one’s too late discarded hope.
Apparently wanting to stray from the Respected Actor vibe he was going for with his previous two films (excluding Murder Mystery), The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) and Uncut Gems, Sandler has chosen to regress completely toward the realm of his mid-90s fare. Except, at least then, the public was far more naive, therefore willing to embrace the brand of hooey that popularized Sandler with the likes of Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. In 2020, however, it doesn’t quite translate–plus, Sandler is now a man in his fifties trying to carry off a bad (and of course offensive) attempt at parodying the mentally challenged (but at the same time toeing enough of a line where we have the “is he or isn’t he?” quality with regard to his handicap). Or, if one wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps “arrested development” is the better term to explain why he talks like a mumbling buffoon (again, rebooting the “comedic” crutch he used as Bobby Boucher in The Waterboy) as Hubie Dubois in the catastrophically named Hubie Halloween.
Living with your mother for your entire life can certainly have the imprinting effect of arrested development. Particularly a matriarch as seemingly “space cadet” as Hubie’s (played by June Squibb), whose character quirk is wearing thrift store-purchased, sexually suggestive t-shirts–the salacious innuendo (e.g. Boner Donor) of which she has no awareness. Still, she’s not so blind that she can’t see how merciless the townspeople of Salem (Massachusetts, not Oregon) are toward him on a constant basis, but most especially on Halloween–which remains his favorite holiday of the year in spite of the increased torment on this particular day.
To drive home The Waterboy II feel once more, we have a new alliterative obsession in the form of Violet Valentine (Julie Bowen), not to be confused with Vicki Vallencourt (Fairuza Balk). Violet has been Hubie’s crush since elementary school, to lay on the aura of patheticness with as much density as possible. Yet what’s perhaps more pathetic is Hubie Halloween planting the idea that Violet returns his affections. And it is here that we must take pause to look at, of all movies, 2011’s Cameron Diaz-starring Bad Teacher. In it, Diaz plays deadbeat educator Elizabeth Halsey, whose sole goal is to save up enough money to buy a new pair of tits so she can secure a rich man and quit her shitty job. Yet she’s not so deadbeat as to reign in her comments toward a student named Garrett (Matthew J. Evans), with incel written all over his future. Thus, when she gets corralled to his house for Christmas dinner by his mother, Mrs. Tiara (Molly Shannon), she’s forced to make conversation with him once they’re left alone in his living room. Alluding to an embarrassingly cheesy poem he had just read in class, she asks, “So, the poem’s about that girl?” He confirms, “Yeah, if I could just talk to her and tell her how I feel, I know she’d understand.” Elizabeth refutes his sentiment with, “Listen, it’s not gonna happen buddy. I was that hot girl, hotter even. And I never would have gone out with you. And I’m not saying that to be mean. I’m saying that to be helpful.” Indignant, he demands, “What do you know? You don’t even know our names.” She shrugs, “I’ll tell you what I do know. A kid who wears the same ‘Gymnastics’ sweatshirt three days a week isn’t getting laid until he’s twenty-nine.”
If only someone like Elizabeth was around for all the Hubies and Garretts and, now that we’re incorporating the other comparative movie, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, in this equation, Jakes (Jesse Plemons) of the world. For while Bad Teacher remains on a similar mainstream, straightforward spectrum as this Sandler movie, Kaufman’s depiction of what it’s really like to be a lonely and undesirable white male tempers both of them with something like objective reality. In any case, if only some adult figure like Elizabeth was around in these boys’ youth to stave them off the path of believing in movies like Hubie Halloween, where the borderline autistic middle-aged man who has never accomplished anything in his life miraculously wins the hot girl as well as the respect and admiration of his peers. As Elizabeth said, that shit, quite simply, does not happen. And if it does, it’s a complete figment of the incel’s imagination, as is the case for Jake, who has to invent an entire relationship before being forced to recognize that it’s all in his head and he’s better off just killing himself than being this schizophrenic. At Garrett’s age, however, there is still the hope that comes with naivety.
So it is that later on in Bad Teacher, the class trip to some sort of Abraham Lincoln simulation finds “Honest Abe” telling the kids that was his name because, “I said what was on my mind, even if it made me unpopular. Remember, a great man always has the courage to say what’s in his heart.” This, unfortunately, spurs Garrett to declare, “I love Chase Rubin-Rossi. I love you Chase. I wanna yell it from the mountaintops!” Elizabeth looks at him in horrified disbelief as he goes on to make an elaborate confession about all the time he and Chase spent together up until the fifth grade when she stopped talking to him. At the end of it, all Chase replies is, “Gross,” leading everyone else to laugh at him and join in on the name-calling. Garrett runs away as Elizabeth goes after him to say, “Okay, that’s enough we get it, you’re crying.” Following him into a log cabin, she sits down in front of Garrett to hear him lament, “She’s never gonna like me, is she?” She sighs, “Are we still on this?” He pines, “She’s my everything.” She rolls her eyes and asserts again, “Okay, here’s the deal man, I cannot keep sugar-coating this for you. This girl is never gonna be interested in you. Never.”
Of course, even Bad Teacher, for priding itself on showcasing an unapologetically callous (read: average human being in American society) lead character, must capitulate to the Hollywood trope of making her endure an “arc,” particularly because she is a woman, and only a man like Alex in A Clockwork Orange can get away with being “unreformed.” Hence, when Elizabeth continues talking to Chase, she seems to have her own little epiphany as she categorizes her as “superficial and her priorities are all fucked up.” This seems to sink in slowly with regard to how she’s acted for her entire life and why she’s been averse to the advances of the gym teacher, Russell Gettis (Jason Segel), who, while “homely,” makes her laugh and appreciates her “hot body” (as Janis Ian from Mean Girls would say). Instead, she’s been consumed by trying to get the attention of Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake, Diaz’s former flame), a rich guy who is conventionally attractive. Yet if we take the message of Bad Teacher all the way up through Act Two and leave out the maudlin part where she succumbs to Russell’s “charms” and apply it to Hubie Halloween, the movie might have been salvaged from its impossibly unrealistic, preachy and speechy conclusion, wherein those who abused and teased Hubie so mercilessly are made to confess it’s because they were secretly jealous of him the whole time. They are not. Not in the movie, and certainly not within the realm of real life.
Yet because this movie seems to be aimed at children (and mind you, not even in the way that Hocus Pocus was while still being enjoyable for adults), the message they want to deliver–that Sandler wants to deliver–is one with such a saccharine concentration that it’s not even consumable. At least for those who know better. Like Elizabeth Halsey. And Jake, who probably tried to believe that things would improve for his “ilk” eventually, he being so smart and kind, even if socially awkward. Maybe the trick is to be dumb though. Maybe that’s the asterisked caveat of the Hubie “moral”: if you’re a dullard with a heart of gold and people are mean to you, karma will come for them eventually so as to make them open their eyes to their own cruelty. Though if one was pushed to cite an actual example of this ever happening in the annals of history, they would be hard-pressed to find one. Which is why, even if Sandler and his cronies believe they’ve created a “modern Halloween classic” (they haven’t), all they’ve really done is perpetuate a false belief that will only serve to create a more hostile incel when the mocked boy in question turns into a man still unaccepted. Angered all the more for having been duped by the pure fantasy of Hubie Dubois’ fate.
