GROWN UPS is, well... mediocre. But it is something that I could truly relate to. My college friends and I recently had our reunion and I tell ya, the jokes were like 15 years old, yet it still sounded as fresh as when we were all in the campus of our University together. So in that sense, I could relate to the movie.
Okay, so Grown ups is all about five friends namely Lenny Feder (Adam Sandler), Eric Lamonsoff (Kevin James), Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock), Marcus Higgins (David Spade), and Rob Hilliard (Rob Schneider), from their high school, if i remember it right (although they looked more like four graders to me), who has won the only basketball championship for a once care-giver-turned coach (Blake Clark) who have reunited after 30 years during the funeral of their beloved coach. They continued the reunion for a 4th of July weekend at a wonderful, memories-filled lakehouse in New England. Sandler became a big hotshot star agent who married a fashion queen Roxanne Chase-Feder (Salma Hayek) with two kids, both boys, who have epitomized how kids of today take a more sedentary lifestyle with the advent of electronic gadgetry that most of the rich could afford. James presented himself to his friends as a co-owner of a furniture business but at the end finally admitted that he just rented his car for the weekend and that he got laid off his job with his wife Sally (Maria Bello) who continually breastfeeds their youngest son at four years old. Rock became a house husband to his wife Deanne (Maya Rudolf) and is in constant heckling and ridicule by his wife's momma, Mama Rozoni (Ebony Jo-Ann). Spade on the other hand is still single is always bummed-out drunk. Schneider also called Rob in this movie (the writers had name shortage in this film?) always had had his kicks on older women even since high school and has married Gloria (Joyce Van Patten, who is incidentally, Dennis Dugan's, the director's ex-wife who also has a May-December, 11-year age diff), a mature horny yet mild-mannered woman specializing in alternative health methods who postponed her cataract surgery just to support her husband get through the mourning at the funeral .
Over-all, the movie has succeeded in a way to convey the nostalgia felt during reunions and the fact that most reunions normally are during funerals or accidents (well at least NOT with my University friends, thank God!) but like I said the movie was mediocre and I expected more from this movie than it just seemingly to be a high resolution video tape of the reminiscing past.
It has a soft-boiled plot that dragged along the lines of reliving the past, the jokes, the humor and the fun being kids and in the finale almost left me agog when all of a sudden, couple and family issues were being thrown out like an open forum. It could have been done better and it could actually work if the build up within the movie was more evident so that it wouldn't come out as thin and trying hard in the end.
Well, one nice thing about the movie is the way the actors equally share the limelight and have their own shining (if not very shining moments) whether it was to be slapped on the cheek with a dehydrated banana or something else. The story tries to combine humor and drama (drama? what drama?) but never was successful. A story must always have a conflict. It is a standard requirement. There were several minor conflicts yet never builds up to a resolution. There were scenes are are so crapped up long taking up precious air time but when taken out of the movie, would never even affect it or the story, which was not too much. Humor was so utterly slapstick; toilet humor, man-boob-penis jokes that are overly and poorly done and well, makes it dragging and in a word, 'blah'.
On the good side though is that it tackles the values regarding the family and addressing the issue of the more sedentary lifestyle of kids nowadays compared to kids of yesteryears. It teaches interaction and increasing the children's social skills and not to be too addicted to electronic gadgetry in order for them to totally enjoy what it is to really be a kid. For that, I recommend seeing the movie. Cinematography and lighting is simple which is good because it fits the simplicity of the movie too. Production design is realistic. Script continuity had a bit of a problem with discontinuous scenes like when Higgins fell into poop that covered his front and totally his face in the 'arrow-roulette' scene yet the next sequence which was supposed to be a continuous scene, the poop was gone and he was clean. Lapse of time? No.
In a nutshell, the movie will make you laugh a bit and will actually entertain if your only purpose is to watch and be entertained. If it is in your nature to critique movies, then this can be a disappointment as it can be so mundane.
-Ace Aenlle Cruz-LuAllen
