The plot threads can be a little hard to follow, especially since most of them revolve around two unseen characters who are dead before the story even begins, but Sandler and Spade’s partnership gives the whole enterprise enough emotional grounding to make up for it.

The Do-Over is a de facto R-rated movie for Sandler, with the attendant bad language and sex jokes, but most of the faux-naughty stuff seems like an afterthought. The jokes that work best fill in the sad details of Charlie’s life.

Would The Do-Over be a spectacular triumph if it’s two stars had played the material relatively straight? Probably not. But the terrible jokes wouldn’t have got in the way of all that plot.

Despite an idiocy metastasized into the marrow of its script impervious to any radiation, there is, as with many of Sandler’s productions, at least something of an upbeat quality to its reprehensibility.

The Do-Over isn’t Sandler at his best, but it’s also not quite as putrid as what we’ve come to expect from him lately.