Anyways, I usually enjoy these movies because its a nice brainless getaway to the movies. Especially when you throw in Kevin James, David Spade, Rob Schneider, and Chris Rock (Not really the last one). I was all sorts of pumped for this one. Sadly, Grown Ups doesn't fall into a Sandler classic.
Grown Ups is the story of five men who grew up together playing basketball, becoming the only championship team for their beloved coach. Which is pretty cool except for the fact that they were only in like 5th grade, which shouldn't be all that hard to repeat. Anyways, their coach dies and they all gather in some nameless New England town for his funeral and rent out a gorgeous house on the side of a lake. The men reminisce, discover how odd each others families are, and try to grow up a little bit.
Well, Chris Rock is never funny. My opinion, but I've never truly found him funny, mostly because he always has the same stupid face on all the time, and even so, the role he is given is awful. Completely forgettable, he sat in the background most of the time. His wife (Maya Rudolph, who is hilarious) acts as the man in his house, while Rock does all the cleaning, cooking, and B$#!ing which amounts to about 7 seconds of amusing banter and an entire movies worth of regret. Rob Schneider's role is equally as terrible for him. He plays the oddball of the group. He's married to a 70 year old woman and is just a newagey kind of guy. The rest of the men spend the whole time making fun of him, and eventually you just feel bad for him. I always enjoy Adam Sandler, Kevin James, and David Spade so I don't have much to gripe about them.
The slapstick in this comedy is pretty funny, i.e. Kevin James falling of a rope swing, Steve Buscemi hitting a wooden wall at fifty miles an hour, the guys playing arrow roullette. The jokes are equally as funny, and many of them seem to be improvised. The problem that got on my nerves was how the jokes were treated. One guy would tell a joke and the rest would laugh and compliment him on how funny it was (heh heh that was a good one!). They are funny jokes, but I don't need the rest of the cast to run in and tell me how funny it was, trust me, I can do it.
Throw that on about 2 hours of movie, plus a 18 minute long scene where everyone explains how they lied to each other and gets through the problems in their marriage (and make fun of Rob Schneider) and you have one tired audience.
The cast is tremendous and does about as well as it can, but nothing can save this movie from itself. It's good to see the guys all back together, but I wish it was in something a little more memorable.
1 and a half out of 4 stars
-Christopher O'Connell
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