Photo courtesy Netflix
Marlon Wayans returned to Netflix last month with an original comedy, “Sextuplets.”
In this film, he channels Eddie Murphy by playing six characters throughout the movie. Wayans plays Alan, a married man, soon to be a father, who grew up in foster care thinking he was the only child. Then he sought out answers about his biological family and discovers he has five other siblings.
Wayans plays his four brothers and one sister. Each one of the siblings has a very different personality from one another. Russell is the first brother introduced in the film. He is the most sheltered sibling of all of them. Russell spent his time in his mother’s home watching reruns of “Mork and Mindy,” The Rockford Files” and eating Frankenberry cereal. Next, we meet Dawn, a trash-talking, loudmouth, exotic dancer, serving time in jail. Ethan is a gold tooth, ’70s-style pimp, known for finessing and scheming. Pete is the sickly, petite sibling. Lastly, we meet Jasper, who is very different from his other siblings, with his red hair, lighter complexion, who happens to be an international spy.
It is later revealed that his biological mother is still alive, whom Marlon plays as well. By the end of the movie, the siblings come together to celebrate the birth of Alan’s newborn baby.
In an interview with ScreenRant, Wayans said it took only 51 days to film the movie. Which is impressive considering all of the costume changes, and special effects done for the film. But this movie does not even come close in comparison to what we have seen from Wayans.
There are instances where you forget Wayans is playing all seven characters because of the way he possesses each of the character’s personalities. He was able to capture their differences by how they walked to their distinctive mannerisms. However, the movie lacks originality, the characters are very stereotypical and a bit problematic. More so, the story plot was way too predictable and was not organically funny.
Many of the reviews were not positive. News outlets like The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Variety and others thought that it was a poorly done, knock-off version of an Eddie Murphy film. Hopefully, in the future, Marlon Wayans learns from this movie and takes more time to develop a well-rounded comedy film.