Review - Grown Ups

Note that Tim's words are white and Josh's words are blue:

"Alright broad comedies, I thought we had an unspoken agreement. I would forgive any weaknesses you may have in premise, plot, and character as long as you promise to show me something funny. Once again you have broken my heart." Is what I would say to this weeks new release Grown-ups if it were a sentient being, and able to understand how bad it was. The movie begins with a group of men who are drawn together again after years of separation by the death of their elementary school basket-ball coach (seriously, not a joke in the movie, just the premise). After the funeral all of their families must spend the fourth of July weekend together for several poorly strung together reasons, and hilarity(?) ensues.

I agree with Tim here, for the most part, but I would argue that the film wasn't bad, it was FUCKING TERRIBLE. Bad enough that if it didn't provide us the hate fuel we needed to write this review, I would have demanded my money back.I think it's safe to assume that many of us are willing to sacrifice poignant plot for a handful of hilarious jokes. It's also worth noting that as far as Tim and I remember, we don't recall them telling us that it was a basketball coach dying until at least halfway through the flick, and we had assumed it was football. No, hilarity does not ensue.

The main characters, who are all obviously played by Adam Sandler's close friends, are; Adam Sandler playing the successful rich guy who has kids that don't understand how to be kids (poor Adam Sandler!). Kevin James as the funny fat guy, who has kids also. Rob Schneider as the vegan holy man married to a woman twice his age. Chris Rock as an emasculated house husband, and David Spade as the cool guy bachelor who never lost his touch. That is where all the characters begin, and it is also where they end an hour and forty minutes, and countless failed jokes later. We see these performances barely phoned in, along with a surprisingly strong supporting cast including Maya Rudolph, Maria Bello, Steve Buschemi, and Salma Hayek just hanging out waiting for their paychecks (one assumes).

This movie is to Adam Sandler's friends as Wild Hogs was to Travolta's. Just because you're all experienced actors (Kevin James? Rob Schneider?) doesn't mean you can just show up and spit lines. I would argue that this "problem" that faces the kids in the movie could be solved with proper parenting, not with an hour and twenty minutes (taking into account the 20 minutes of introductions) of doddling around like a bunch of people with learning disablities. Anyone else have a problem seeing Hayek as anything but Serendipity from Dogma?


You are also left with the impression that everyone working on this movie treated it the same way, just a giant money teat upon which to suckle. Down to the director, editor, and music supervisor. Almost every decision made was the wrong one. There were too many jarring scene transitions to count, and even edits in scene were sloppy. The music ques were the least interesting things imaginable. Every scene that had a pop song worked the same way, loud music cue (Aerosmith, awesome!), to give the new scene some energy, which almost immediately dropped off into nothing.

Tim is being far too kind when he talks about the scene edits. This movie infuriated me with it's cuts. I sat in my seat seething with rage over the lack of pause between joke, despite the fact that I knew the joke I could be missing would be abysmally un-funny anyway. There were points when the music in the background is horrifically inappropriate, such is the case when the group is spreading the ashes of the late coach. Instead of a heart-melting soft song we get rock/pop blaring in the background. How suiting!

The real problem with this movie was of course the humor, or lack thereof. In movies of this type you can forgive almost anything if there are a few laughs. I know walking into a theatre showing Grown ups that everything I have complained about up to this point is a distinct possibility. None of it would matter, all would be forgiven if it just had a few laughs. As it stands though watching this movie was like watching someone attempt to build a house of cards for two hours and never quite get anywhere, just set up and fall, over and over again. The only two scenes in the movie I laughed at both featured a cute little girl playing Adam Sandler and Salma Hayek's daughter. In the opening scene she crashes Sandler's car because she answers a phone call of someone telling her that Sandler's coach went to heaven (who would do that? "Hi honey, you don't know me but could you tell your daddy that his elementary school basket-ball coach went to heaven? Thanks."), and she tries to find heaven on the in car navigation system. THAT is funny, especially when you smear a serious, sentimental music cue, and some hammy sad acting on top. The second features the little girl losing a tooth and trying to show Salma Hayek, who is on the phone. Hayek says "that's nice honey, put it under your pillow, and I'll leave you a dollar". Then we cue the sappy music and acting once more, as the little girl realizes there is no tooth fairy, and the movie underlines in sharpie one of it's "themes"; parents are too busy now-a-days. These scenes actually made it almost worth sitting through, but not quite.

 First off, the child didn't even crash into anything, she bumped into a carefully placed garbage can in the middle of a lawn, before she delivered that wonderful line so well described above. AS Tim says , the funniest parts of this film are the parts that are supposed to be totally serious, heavy handed messengers. You know what I just realized? That little girl in those two scenes is ONLY IN THOSE TWO SCENES. I understand that you need to give your names some face time, but they're the thing really bringing this movie down with their irresponsible flaunting of their celebrity status. I bet this movie would be a thousand times better if we watched it from the kid's perspective.

All of the messages, and themes this movie has to offer are the laziest imports from every other movie like this ever. As mentioned above the two prominent ones are; kids just don' t understand how to be kids anymore, and, parents need to take time from being busy grown-ups (see what I did there?), to spend time with their families. These are only weakly shown for most of the movie, and mostly serve to set up sight gags of kids dressed in funny clothes. This was supposed to be a family friendly summer movie blockbuster, but instead it is just another Happy Madison production, but one with all the swearing, lewdness, and rambunctious teenager-without-ritalin energy taken out of it to achieve a rating other than R. After you have taken all those things away, you realize there was nothing else there to begin with.

I think the overall message of this film would have been delivered better if the kids (every one of them put together) had screen time above 10 minutes or so. All we get here is a Sandler flick with none of the standard gags we would love to have seen, presumably because he is too old/mature now to run around and make poop jokes. Additionally, this movie has fucking Chris Rock in it and he doesn't swear once. What is that shit?

Bottom Line: Poor Steve Buscemi, he was acting so hard god bless him. All I could think about was how awesome he was in Ghost World. I would suggest that nobody see this movie unless you are married to someone who was in it, or worked on it. Even then you will probably want to change the subject on the drive home from the theatre.



Bottom Line:
Let me just say, that this movie has the following occur:

Woman gets pied in the face
Man falls face first in poop
Man runs into low hanging tree branch
Man crushes small bird with ass (for comedic effect) 

Slow-mo wind-in-hair scene with model like woman

Man is injured to the point of a full body cast
Man mistakes woman's breast for her pregnant stomach
Woman unwillingly shoots breastmilk in the face of another woman
Man is too fat to be pulled by a motor boat.
Man has inexplicable fear of turtles 

Fart jokes

And none of it works. Why the hell did half the audience of our screening applaud?