Hubie Halloween Review
If you’ve been looking for some lighter fare to add to your ongoing Halloween viewing list this year, and you happen to be an Adam Sandler fan, you might want to check out Hubie Halloween. Written by Sandler and Tim Herlihy and directed by Steven Brill, it dropped on Netflix just in time to get everyone into the Halloween season spirit.
Hubie Halloween also features an all-star cast that will be very familiar to lovers of various offbeat films. Think Kevin James (from Becky), Rob Schneider, Steve Buscemi (from The Dead Don’t Die and Tales from the Darkside: The Movie), Maya Rudolph, and Ray Liotta (from Hannibal and Identity), to name just a few. But how does Hubie stack up to other films from Sandler’s catalog, and is there enough about it to make it an actual Halloween horror movie?
The storyline of Hubie Halloween follows dim-witted but good-hearted busybody, Hubie Dubois, a deli worker who resides in Salem, Massachusetts. Even though Hubie is almost universally mocked and despised by his fellow Salemites, he considers it his solemn responsibility to look out for them. He also loves Halloween, so he appoints himself the town’s official Halloween monitor, even giving a lecture on Halloween safety to the local schoolchildren.
However, this Halloween, Salem seems to be a hotspot for unsavory happenings of all types. An enigmatic psychopath with a serious Michael Myers vibe going on has escaped from the nearby asylum. Hubie’s new neighbor (Buscemi) might be a werewolf. Then there’s the mysterious kidnapper who’s on the loose. It looks like it’s up to Hubie to figure out what’s going on here and save the residents of the town he loves from harm once again, whether they appreciate it or not.
Whether Hubie Halloween is a good fit for you or not will depend heavily on how you feel about Adam Sandler’s particular brand of screwball comedy. Hubie has a lot in common with Sandler’s characters in films like Happy Gilmore and The Waterbody, all the way down to the silly, borderline irritating voices. There are also many nods and callbacks to previous Sandler films throughout Hubie Halloween — something that will surely be appreciated by diehard fans of his work.
If you’re a comedy fan, you’ll also love the parade of favorites who make appearances here. Michael Chiklis and Ray Liotta may not be comedians by trade, but they’re both great in Hubie Halloween and very funny. Minor characters played by Maya Rudolph, Steve Buscemi, Kevin James, Shaquille O’Neal, and Tim Meadows also lend texture and color to the film’s fictionalized version of Salem. Then there’s June Squibb (as Hubie’s overprotective mother) and her endless parade of R-rated T-shirts.
If you’re not a Sandler fan or — worse — detest the types of characters he plays, Hubie Halloween is unlikely to be the film that changes your mind about him. It’s not exactly fine cinema, nor is it a proper horror film. However, there are enough nods here to classic horror tropes that a genre fan who loves Sandler films will probably enjoy it well enough. The film’s also pretty funny in that off-color, guilty pleasure type of way that may be precisely what we all need this Halloween in particular. We’ve had a rough year!
That said, Hubie Halloween doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it isn’t pretending to be anything it’s not. It’s a silly, over-the-top comedy with a holiday theme — the film world’s junk food.
