Roommates Is A Great Comedy, But I Absolutely Hated The Ending

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I recently watched Roommates with my Netflix subscription, and for 90% of the movie, I can say the Sadie Sandler comedy measured up to some of her father’s best movies. Unfortunately, the ending was unlike anything I expected, and while I still like the movie overall, I can’t stop thinking about its awful ending.

It’s painful to say, because there are so many things I love about the Chandler Levack-directed film. In fact, I quite loved how Sandler’s Devon and Chloe East’s Celeste mimicked the relationship of people I knew in college, but unlike those situations, this movie took a dramatic turn at the very end.

How Roommates Ends

Roommates features a lot of the typical tropes one might encounter when they live with a stranger in college, such as nonpayment for expensive trips, or sharing an intimate moment with another person without giving your roomie a heads up. Devon and Celeste had many of these moments, and toward the end of the school year, were ready to find different rooms.

While Devon had planned for weeks to move out of their shared space, she was surprised to see that Celeste had cleared out after the former made a pretty brutal public presentation about her. At first, Devon was happy to be on her own, but when she heard Celeste telling her side of the story to the dorm’s RA (played by Saturday Night Live‘s Sarah Sherman), she snapped. The two girls fought and inadvertently caused a fire that burned the entire dorm down.

Roommates then went on to explain that after the dorm burned down, Celeste went on to be expelled from many other schools, and after being cut off by her wealthy father, got a job as an associate at Staples (which he owns). As for Devon, she had to serve two months in prison and met her new roommate, Louise (Megan Thee Stallion). The movie ends revealing that Devon and Louise go into business together and open their own architectural firm.

Roommates Trades Out What Could’ve Been A Satisfying Emotional Resolution And Trades It For Chaos

What’s baffling about the ending to Roommates is that it feels as though it was changed at the last minute, and goes against everything that was being built toward before that. Celeste gets likened to Regina George and her evil schemes in Mean Girls, when I feel the back half overlooks the complex issues going on with her character. Her mother has Alzheimer’s, her father remarried someone who is two years older than her, and she yearns for a family dynamic similar to what Devon has. There are many opportunities to portray her as a sympathetic character, and the movie ignores all chances with its ending.

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Additionally, I think Devon’s inability to see Celeste’s issues makes her come off as brattish, yet Roommates largely ignores this as well and sees her as the hero. There were many times while watching, I felt Devon came off as mean or insensitive, and we’d get a scene at the end where we saw how Celeste perceived some of the things Devon said about her.

Sure, Devon has to go to prison, but ultimately gets the happy ending she wanted despite it all. Also, two months for burning down a university building feels like a relative slap on the wrist, so shoutout to her lawyer for that one.

It felt like a subversion of what I expect from Adam Sandler’s comedies, like Billy Madison, where all the chaos and weirdness happen throughout, and not at the end. In fact, almost all Adam Sandler movies I can think of had an uplifting and nice ending, though that’s because some of them are rom-coms. Odd that Roommates would make this mistake, given that Happy Madison Productions was behind it.

Despite all of this, I still say readers should give Roommates a watch and be on the lookout for other upcoming Netflix movies. Who knows, maybe I have it all wrong about the ending, though I have a feeling others watching will feel the same.