In the 2007 comedy “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry,” one man’s quest for decent health insurance leads to a sham romantic coupling of the heterosexual firefighters played by Adam Sandler and Kevin James.

For an hour the movie is one shrill homophobic gag after another. Then, something interesting happens. Sandler’s Chuck stops dead for a speech.

“Unfortunately, we hurt people, people we wouldn’t want to hurt in a million years, by doing what we did,” he says of the gay ruse. “For the record,” he says, referring to an anti-gay slur, “that’s a bad word. Don’t use it. I used to say it more than anybody, but I was ignorant. It’s hurtful.”

It’s a disarming moment of apology, and it’s more than the character talking; it’s Sandler, owning up to his public. While it can’t help but sound hypocritical in the context of the rest of the picture, it’s one small step for mainstream acceptance of legalized gay marriage, which seemed a long way off eight years ago.

Now I wonder if Sandler might take the events of the past week as an opportunity for some related soul-searching.

On April 22 and 23, a Native American cultural adviser and several Native performers and extras walked off the set of “The Ridiculous 6,” a Netflix-produced Western spoof co-written and starring Sandler. One actress, Allison Young, blanched at doing a scene requiring her to fall down drunk, surrounded by jeering white men who rouse her by dousing her with more alcohol. Various versions of the script leaked online include characters with names such as “Beaver Breath” and “No Bra.”

Young told one interviewer: “We talked to the producers about our concerns. They just told us, ‘If you guys are so sensitive, you should leave’ … This is supposed to be a comedy that makes you laugh. A film like this should not make someone feel this way.”

Netflix countered with the usual defense for a cheap, lowbrow comedy. “The movie has ridiculous in the title for a reason: because it is ridiculous,” the Netflix spokesperson said. “It is a broad satire of Western movies and the stereotypes they popularized, featuring a diverse cast that is not only part of — but in on — the joke.”

The movie is months away from completion. We don’t know if any of the Native American characters are in on any of the jokes, which rely (judging from versions of the script leaked online) on guys talking about putting their “pee-pee” into someone’s “teepee.”

As the title of Bob Hope’s final starring vehicle put it: Cancel my reservation.

This much is clear. People of color, to say nothing of women, who have been marginalized, patronized or humiliated by a stupid joke in an Adam Sandler movie over the last few years constitute the biggest club in modern Hollywood. And until last week, that club was one of the least heralded, if only because its members have been putting up with the demeaning treatment for a century.

We routinely give comedy, and comedians, a pass because (according to the traditional argument) you can’t get a laugh without offending somebody. One person’s edgy winner (“Borat,” for example) is another’s cause for outrage.

But something has been bubbling beneath the surface of too many Sandler comedies in recent years, a cold, mean-spirited smugness reeking of unexamined white-male privilege.

Coming off his previous comedy, “Blended,” which was widely derided for its patronizing depiction of its black South African characters propping up the white leads, Sandler must now feel he can’t win. The movies that appeal to many critics, notably Paul Thomas Anderson’s bizarre, intense romantic fable “Punch-Drunk Love,” reveal him to be an interesting and effective actor. These are the ones that tank with Sandler’s core audience.

Through thick and thin (or, as Mel Brooks used to say, “through thin”), that audience for years could be counted on to support Sandler in comedies best described as low and lower, some of them pretty entertaining. “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” is a weirdly compelling burlesque on Israeli/Arab tensions; it’s leagues ahead of the other ones, the terrible ones: “Jack and Jill” and “Just Go With It” and “That’s My Boy.”

Sandler’s comedies have plenty of admirers, among them Bilge Ebiri, who wrote for Vulture of the star’s “profound sense of self-loathing” as a comic and dramatic virtue. “Whether his character is being sensitive or cruel, victimized or boiling over with anger, falling in love or engaging in romantic duplicity, he remains above it all,” Ebiri wrote. “He still can’t seem to be bothered to care.” I don’t consider that quality as much of a virtue as Ebiri does, but to each his own.

The history of screen performance hides a parallel history of performers who held and continue to hold their noses while figuring out how to play demeaning roles. Just ask half the men in Hollywood, and nearly all of the women, and every single actress or actor of any sort of color.

It’s best to let “The Ridiculous 6” make its way to its final destination, aka Netflix, before we pass judgment on the quality of its humor or its filmmaking or the way it deploys ethnic stereotype for laughs. For now, though, it’s hard not to take heart from a small group of infrequently employed Native American performers who decided that enough was enough, and the taste in their mouths wasn’t worth it. Sandler might want to reassess that “Chuck and Larry” speech about the ignorance and hurtfulness of certain words and certain cultural-dustbin depictions of human beings.

Also, making funnier movies wouldn’t hurt. Just FYI.