Grown Ups

For a movie called Grown Ups, this is a very juvenile film. It's also tired, trite, and completely devoid of a plot. It takes five comic actors who have been likable or funny in the past, and then gives them nothing to do but lame slapstick and gross out gags. There are a lot of scenes where the stars (which include Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and David Spade) seem to be making up the dialogue and entire scenes right there on camera. And no, that's not a good thing.

But before all that, the opening 10 minutes do seem to hint at a workable premise. The set up opens in 1978, where five kids win a big championship basketball game. The coach invites the kids and their families to his cabin, where they celebrate. Flash forward to the present, and those five kids are now adults with hectic lives. Lenny (Sandler) is a Hollywood agent with spoiled technology-obsessed kids and a fashion plate wife (Salma Hayek), Eric (James) is...well, fat, Kurt (Rock) is a hen-pecked stay at home dad, Rob (Schneider) is deep in a romantic relationship with an elderly woman, and Marcus (Spade) is a sleazy womanizer. Spade's introduction scene offers an ominous sign of where the humor in this film is going, as it's built around an O.J. Simpson joke (the first of two in this movie).

The friends are reunited when they receive news that their childhood coach has passed away. They gather at the cabin of their youth to respect his memory, spread his ashes, and maybe teach their individual kids the wonders of nature, if they can tear them away from their video games and texting devices. Mostly, though, they sling comic insults at each other, talk about the old days, stare too long at a pair of sexy young women (who just happen to be daughters of Rob's from past marriages), and look for slapstick antics to get into. Kevin James plays the fat guy of the group, so he of course is required to be a walking disaster area. Seconds after he appears on the screen for the first time, he breaks a swimming pool, sending all his kids flying out of the water. He also slams into trees and rocks, talks about eating a lot, and sometimes wears a bucket of fried chicken on his head as a helmet for reasons not explained in the screenplay by Sandler and Fred Wolf.

Believe it or not, he's one of the more developed characters to appear in Grown Ups. Most of the guys (and their wives and their kids) are written so thin, they might as well be transparent. There's hints at conflict now and then, which is brought up briefly, only to be ignored. Rock's character is jealous that his wife (Maya Rudolph) gets more respect from their family than he does. James' wife (Maria Bello) still breast feeds their four-year-old son, and is frequently shown with a breast pump in a lot of her scenes. And, of course, the rival basketball team who lost the big game 30 years ago is still around, holding a grudge, and want a rematch with the five friends. This leads to the most anticlimactic "big game" climax in the history of cinema. The movie is bizarrely devoid of plot, characters, and anything a viewer can grasp onto.

This wouldn't matter if the material itself is funny, but it seldom is. Okay, I chuckled during the scene where Chris Rock and Tim Meadows (as a member of the rival basketball team) argue over which one is the token black guy, but that was as close as this movie got to a smile from me. What it does have is a lot of gross-out humor. We get a close up of a disgusting foot, a guy landing face-first in feces (only to have his face get pushed back in when he tries to stand up, of course), and naturally, someone getting squirted in the face with breast milk. I wonder what kind of audience Grown Ups is trying to attract, as it's too dumb and childish for adults, but far too raunchy for children, despite the PG-13 rating.

It's sad for me to see Adam Sandler follow up his wonderful and underrated performance in last year's Funny People with this slapdash comedy, but I'm sure this movie will make more money in a weekend than that film made in its entire run. This will obviously inspire more films like this. Hey, I get it. These kind of movies are fun to make, and do well with audiences. I just wish his smarter films got the same respect, so he wouldn't have to dip into this well so often.

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