Film Review Grown Ups

US 2010. Cert 12A. 102 mins. Dir: Dennis Dugan. Cast: Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Steve Buscemi, Rob Schneider, David Spade, Salma Hayek

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Adam Sandler is a name now synonymous with juvenile comedy, whether he’s playing the part of actor, producer or writer. His latest foray, Grown Ups, is no different and reunites him with the director responsible for You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, Big Daddy and Happy Gilmore.

“Play life just like you played that game today,” advises coach “Buzzer” to his championship junior high basketball team. Thirty years on and “The Buzz is up there coaching heaven’s team”, prompting the gang to reunite at his funeral. Hiring out the lake house for the weekend with families in tow, the friends revert back to childish games with intentionally hilarious results.

Hollywood talent agent Lenny (Sandler) and his designer wife Roxanne (Salma Hayek) are the most successful of the crew, while Eric (Kevin James) is co-owner of a lawn furniture company and Kurt (Rock)is a househusband. The pint-sized, less conventional friends are the brunt of the jokes: vegan pacifist Rob (Schneider) and single womaniser Marcus (Spade). As the one who didn’t hit puberty until 19, Rob’s third wife, Gloria, is virtually double his age but disgustingly more outwardly passionate than any of the other wives. His size, serious spiritualism and toupee make him an easy target for jokes, being compared to an “elder gay Jonas brother”, “Elvis as an oompa-loompa or a “midget Filipino” among other things.

Despite a cast of recognised funny men, their usually discerning on-screen partners (Maya Rudolph, Maria Bello) and a bizarre Steve Buscemi appearance, the standard of acting in Grown Ups is questionable, and even expected quick-fire one liners fall flat. Much of the “comedy” comes from a verbal tirade of puerile remarks in a game of one-upmanship as the friends try to good-naturedly humiliate each other: “You grown up on me man – you got a B cup now?”, “Nice hat, it brings out the death in the room”. Some limited laughs are to be had from Curley, the dog with clipped vocal chords who “sounds like Stephen Hawking”, and Bean, Eric’s “48 month-old son” who still breast feeds.

Grown Ups is just as much about nostalgically looking back at childhood as it is about looking forward. Rich Lenny’s over-indulged sons are in particular representative of a change in childhood where kids text their nannies for milkshakes and camomile, are no longer engaged by board games, have forgotten how to play and are obsessed with electronics. Aside from attempts at embracing the great outdoors, Grown Ups is also about relationships – as all are predictably reconciled at the end when the truth comes out and unknown marital problems are fixed.

In a rich canon of retrospective films looking fondly back at childhood through reuniting old friends, Grown Ups disappointingly offers nothing new – instead reusing the cast in well-worn character parts and lazily trotting out unfunny one-liners.

In cinemas now

Posted on Wednesday 1st September 2010
Leo Owen

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