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Grown Ups review

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Fri, 17 Sep 2010 5:50p.m.

Still from Grown Ups

Still from Grown Ups

Reviewed by Kate Rodger

High school reunion movies are always plentiful and rarely merciful, but that doesn’t stop Hollywood from bankrolling them.

The Hollywood branch of the Bank of Adam Sandler has no shortage of funds, so Adam got a few of his mates together, and Grown Ups is the result.

The flimsy premise is mates meeting up for the funeral of their school basketball coach. It’s been a long time since school, the team hasn’t played together since, and most are married with children.

Grown Ups, in other words.

Each represents a different male cliché. Sandler (Happy Gilmore/Funny People) is Lenny, the successful Hollywood agent married to a fashion designer (Salma Hayek).

Chris Rock (Dogma/Madagascar) is Kurt the hen-pecked house-husband, and Kevin James (I Know Pronounce You Chuck & Larry/Paul Blart: Mall Cop) is Eric, a small-time businessman pretending to be more successful than he is. Throw in the womanising man-child (David Spade) and the hippy with a penchant for much older women (Rob Schneider), and you’ve got a full deck.

With wives and kids in toe, armed with stories of the good ole days, they spend the weekend together, reminiscing about old times, and complaining about the new ones. Unfortunately, attempts to make any or all of the above even remotely entertaining, were completely lost on me.

When it comes to the wives, there are some unusual outings here. Along with Salma Hayek as Sandler’s glamorous wife is Maria Bello, an actress recently better known for her weightier dramatic roles (A History of Violence/Thank You for Smoking) and who plays opposite Kevin James as a woman who still breastfeeds their four year old son. Maya Rudolf (Away We Go) is a more understandable casting, joining her SNL alumni as Chris Rock’s other half.

So maybe it’s the laziness of it all, the knowledge that there are some funny people in the room, and surely they can do better than this? Maybe I’ve become a joke-snob, and just don’t find peeing-in-the-pool humour all that funny? Or maybe, just maybe, Grown Ups is just rubbish.

One Star.

     Grown Ups
:: Director: Dennis Dugan
:: Starring: Adam Sandler, Salma Hayek, Chris Rock, Kevin James, Maria Bello, Steve Buscemi, Rob Schneider, David Spade, Maya Rudolph, Norm MacDonald
:: Running Time: 102 mins
:: Rating:  PG – contains coarse language
:: Release Date: September 16, 2010
:: Trailer: Watch here

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Comments

24 Sep 2010 06:18p.m.

Sandler blows wrote:

Joe did you actually read the review? She knows what the movie is trying to do, and she knows it fails, which it does. So you laughed at it heaps, like you probably did at Disaster Movie and Couple's Retreat and Love Guru. That doesn't mean everyone else likes that abysmal form of comedy. And Kate not liking rubbish comedy like this does not make her a cinema snob.

22 Sep 2010 04:52p.m.

BJ wrote:

sorry Joe but Kates right , the film should be embarrassed to be called a comedy

21 Sep 2010 09:57p.m.

Joe wrote:

Hey Kate, I think you have become a joke-snob. After being surrounded by narrow minded snobs in my third year film class, I decided simply to rate films on whether I enjoyed them or not. I don't care if a film is predictable, full of clichés, lazy and erratic, if I enjoyed it then it is doing something right. Grown ups is not an A movie, it is not trying to be. All it wants is to make people laugh for a couple of hours and feel good. The film had me in fits of laughter so intense I was gasping for breath. Its characters are cliché because it saves time, we know the characters immediately and can get right down to the humour. This film deserves three and a half stars from me, it was a laugh and cinema snobs who want to prove how much they know by slamming a film for its premise, characters and plot need to know something; it was not made for you! You don't like it then watch something else. There is a problem in the film industry and its not Hollywood making crappy movies, its people deciding a film is crap based on anything other than enjoyment. You may have not found it funny and that is fine. I just hope people don't just read your review and decide not to see it.