‘The Wrong Missy’ Movie Review: Lauren Lapkus Has Enough Laughs for 10 Netflix Movies
The opening of The Wrong Missy is like a comedic Raiders of the Lost Ark. Lauren Lapkus is the boulder. Tim (David Spade) is on a blind date with Melissa (Lapkus) that’s so hilariously bad, it just spirals and spirals until Tim can only attempt to flee. It only gets funnier from there.
Lauren Lapkus is ‘The Wrong Missy’
Lapkus plays an adorable psycho and she is relentless. Spade plays Tim as a shy guy, very different than his usual sarcastic character. He’s being the straight man to Lapkus and graciously being her blank canvas on which to wreak havoc.
Tim doesn’t call Melissa for a second date. He runs into another woman named Melissa (Molly Simms) at the airport. Their meet cute is the same luggage mixup that happened to Commandant Lassard in Police Academy 5. Instead of diamond smugglers, Tim finds he and this Melissa have everything in common: neither likes to drink, they both read James Patterson and have survived similar bad relationships.
So Tim gets her number and texts her later. They continue corresponding so Tim invites her to his company retreat in Hawaii. When she arrives Tim realizes he’s been texting the wrong Melissa in his phone. His bad blind date shows up. She goes by Missy for short.
Adventures with ‘The Wrong Missy’
The Wrong Missy does ask you to make a lot of assumptions for the mistake to work, but it’s worth it because it’s fun. Really, Tim should have known the woman he was texting was being way more aggressive than the woman he met at the airport. He wanted to believe that perfect woman also had those tendencies. It becomes a little less appealing when it’s her only mode.
Lapkus has no trouble keeping up Missy’s energy for the rest of the movie. She screams at kids like she screamed at men in the bar where they met, then turns immediately. She freaks out over a lavish hotel room. Everything she does is funny.
The Wrong Missy has set pieces for Missy where Lapkus can go wild getting drunk at a company party giving lap dances, cliff diving, or barfing into a shark cage. But she doesn’t need a gimmick. She’ll find something funny to do even in the in between scenes. There are comically visual effects enhanced pratfalls. She survives cartoonish injuries, but does plenty magnificent ones for real.
Naughty and sweet
The Wrong Missy Would be R rated if submitted to the MPAA. It is TV-MA but this is premium cable, not network TV-MA. The language alone is R-rated with lots of F bombs but Missy gets creative with sexual language too.
You know how these movies go. Any movie where a man and woman hate each other (even if it’s one sided in this case), they will end up eventually hitting it off. That’s ok. It’s a reliable formula and it’s sweet here. These characters are so weird, for them to find common ground an hour into a 90 minute movie is earned.
Most of the supporting cast get a few laughs too. Nick Swardson, Rob Schneider, Jackie Sandler, Geoff Pierson and Sarah Chalke all have at least one good moment. Usually they’re reacting to Lapkus. She’s really the sun around which all the comedy in the film revolves.
