Review: Grown Ups (2010)

Where to begin with Grown Ups. I have never been so displeased with an Adam Sandler movie in my life, and we all know he's made plenty of disappointments. But Grown Ups is like the peanut on top of a shit sundae, the shit sundae being the last decade of Sandler's career. Even my father, who is still shocked that Eddie Murphy's The Nutty Professor and its sequel are not on the IMDb Top 250, thought this movie was one of the worst things he's ever seen.

The easiest way to begin is with the plot. It revolves around five old friends (Sandler, James, Rock, Spade, Schneider) who are brought together after a long time apart by the death of a grade school basketball coach. After the funeral they rent out an old cabin for the weekend. And that's about it. An easier way to describe the plot is five tired, aging comedians spouting off unfunny one-liners. Not to say the movie doesn't provide the occasional laugh, but unfortunately one snicker every 15 minutes does not constitute a comedy. Honestly, the funniest part of this movie is the laughable idea that Sandler and James wives are Salma Hayek and Maria Bello, respectively.

And maybe that's because half of the cast has never really been funny in the first place. Rob Schneider has coasted off of Sandler's success for years and, in Grown Ups, plays what I believe to be exactly who he is in real life: the friend that is kept around to get shit on by everyone else. David Spade hasn't been funny since Chris Farley passed away, and even then all he played was an annoying little prick (although he played it to a T). Kevin James is painfully unfunny in this movie (we get it: he's fat). Hopefully one day he will return to his Hitch form, but I don't see that in the near future. Lastly, there are Sandler and Rock: two guys who used to make me laugh, but for whatever reason have either lost it or just don't really care anymore.

But we have no one to blame but ourselves for the quality of this movie. Despite nearly universal panning and laughless trailers, Grown Ups made 40 million dollars on its opening weekend. Adam Sandler found a way to effortlessly make a shit movie and still make a sizeable profit. And for that, I congratulate him.

2/10