Grown Ups quick review

So...

I find it interesting that on the same weekend one of the better movies this year was released (see my previous post), we also saw the unspooling of one of the worst movies so far this year. I'm talking about Grown Ups, which I actually walked out of about forty minutes into a free screening, and I still wanted my money back. Not even the pretty New England forest scenery saved this film, if you can even call it a film, since it essentially boils down to a bunch of past-their-prime comedians sitting around a lake attempting to poke fun at each other.

Sadly, a few days later, I found out I was unable to escape my fate of suffering through this flick, as I ended up at a friends house where he suddenly popped in a studio copy of the film and forced me to sit through it again. He argued that it was one of those movies that was so bad it was funny. Oh, how I wish it were one of those movies. Instead, I was treated to another serving of fail, which began with a nearly twenty minute long funeral (at least, it felt that way) and then saw five childhood friends reunite over the July Fourth weekend at a lakeside cabin. The funeral is awkward and it just goes downhill from there. Even for a comedy, the scenes have little transition from one to the next, which makes the movie jarring at times. Worse, sometimes the scenes serve little purpose but to advertise various products, such as a certain Southern Fried Chicken brand.

You would think that with all the so called talent in Grown Ups (Adam Sandler, Kevin James, David Spade, Rob Schneider) there would be at least one LOL scene. Unfortunately, half the time the cast seems asleep. The rest of the time I can't tell if the jokes are being improvised or if someone actually wrote this crap. Too bad for Adam Sandler, since he is credited with the screenplay he loses either way. Even poor Chris Rock gets wasted in a role that seems like it was scripted for someone else, and then at the last minute someone decided they had better put a black man into the movie.

What does constitute for humor is often a mixture of jokes we have seen one too many times already over the past few years. Male nudity? Check. Fat guy falling down for no reason? Check. Fat guy eating anything he can get his hands on? Check. Old guys hitting on hot teenage girls? Check.

Most of these "jokes' don't even make any sense, such as when David Spade refuses to wear any pants when he wakes up in the morning at the rented house the grown ups are all staying at, his reason being that he has to wear them at home. Okay, so you live alone at home and, what, force yourself to wear pants there, but when you are staying with friends and their families (including little kids) you refuse to wear pants at their house? It's like the filmmakers were forced to put in a shot of a man's bare ass because both The Hangover and Forgetting Sarah Marshall did it, even if it makes even less sense here than it did in those movies.

Is it asking too much for these comedies to create their jokes out of logic and character, rather than just tossing them out blindly and bending the story around them? Even logic, though, may not have helped Grown Ups, as the film has little in the way of character to go with it. Adam Sandler, for example, is introduced as a tough Hollywood agent who spends the first few minutes yelling at someone on the phone, threatening to pull Julia Roberts out of the other man's picture. In the very next scene, though, he is am entirely different person, patient and loving. I found myself even asking why the movie bothered to show us his job, since it doesn't gel with his character from then on, especially the part where he sticks his finger up another man's butt (I kid you not). Maybe I was over-thinking Grown Ups, but I was honestly so bored that I couldn't help getting lost in my thoughts. The alternative, of course, was to watch the movie.

Best viewed: Don't.