Grown Ups (12A)

Dir. Dennis Dugan, USA, 102mins, 2010
         
Cast: Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider , Kevin James, Salma Hayek

Review by Matthew Rodgers

The planets have aligned, for this is the week you've all been waiting for - the moment that Rob Schneider and David Spade are finally paired on the big screen. Rejoice!

In truth though it's sadly the all too familiar return to gross-out puerility for Adam Sandler in the kind of eye rolling project that reduces Funny People to a blip and makes the fantastic Punch Drunk Love all but a distant memory.

Essentially a series of increasingly unfunny sequences that feature the main cast sitting around and attempting to out-do each other with shockingly inept one-liners. Grown Ups is the story of a group of childhood friends returning to their old stomping ground, when their Championship winning basketball coach dies. Introduced as we are to a line up of vulgar, paper thin characters, we spend far too much time in the company of Chris Rock's emasculated house husband, Kevin James' overweight father, David Spade's middle-aged Lothario, Rob Schneider's OAP chasing hippie, and Sandler's recurring mega-rich man-child character, as they reenact the plot of Cheaper by the Dozen by way of Parenthood but without any laughs.

No, I retract that previous statement. I do recall laughing just once, as Rock addresses his step-mother by calling her “ Idi Amin with a propeller on your head ” - and by telling you that, I have saved you the cost of a cinema ticket.

The most astonishing fact about Grown Ups is how on earth it has made $150M at the US Box Office? The jokes are seemingly assembled by listening in to playground conversations based on bodily functions or watching a Little Britain DVD and recycling material that has long since dated.

Not a single member of this boys' brigade emerge with any credit. Even the obligatory Steve Buscemi cameo is useless and the way that the juvenile script reduces women to “breasts on legs” is just offensively tedious.

An unholy mess of incessant noise from both the intolerably bratty child actors and the lazy lead ensemble, Grown Ups may have an admirable message of family values and “put down the PS3 and go outside”, but it is hidden beneath scene after scene of crass predictability.