Plot– After moving his family back to his hometown to be with his friends and their kids, Lenny finds out that between old bullies, new bullies, schizo bus drivers, drunk cops on skis, and 400 costumed party crashers sometimes crazy follows you.
Well… There goes two hours of my life I’ll never get back. Thanks Grown Ups 2. However, that thanks isn’t full of cynicism, more-so I’m actually grateful I sat down and watched you. Now I can talk about your lack of a movie with a clean conscience as well as dive deeper later on about something I noticed while watching you, why the masses flock to go see films just like you.
To be fair, this won’t be much of a full review due to the fact that I can go on for pages upon pages about things this movie either did poorly, or how completely unfunny of a film it is despite it’s large cast of famously comedic people.
Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James, David Spade, Colin Quinn, Maya Rudolph, Steve Buscemi, Tim Meadows, Jon Lovitz, Andy Samburg, Shaquille O’Neal, and Nick Swardson all appear in this film alongside Selma Hayek, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and Taylor Lautner.
With that kind of cast this film should have been on the scales of one of the funniest movies of all time. Instead, we get a lazy, forgettable, uninspiring pile of crap that makes me want to bash my head against a wall.
I can go on and on about this, instead I’m going to give you the 10 worst things I found wrong with this movie. This is in no particular order because they are all equally as bad.
10- The film’s message was “anti-bullying”, yet Sandler and his cronies go around making fun of everyone and are the biggest bully’s in the film. Even when the bully that tormented Sandler as a child (Stone Cold Steve Austin) realizes what he did was wrong and wants to make up. Sandler challenges him to a fight and continues to berate him in front of everyone. Guess there’s no better thing than belittling another person in front of a crowd of people. GREAT MESSAGE MOVIE!
9- This film should have came with its own laugh track… Oh wait it did. Everyone in this movie laughs at their own jokes. Not saying it’s a bad thing, but when the jokes are on the scale of incredibly not funny and they get an extra 15 seconds of screen time to make them seem more funny. I felt like I was watching “Full House” or any program on the Disney Channel.
8- David Spade is a ladies man in this movie….. Nuff said.
7- If a joke wasn’t funny the first time, lets turn it into a repetitive joke and/or catch phrase and do it over and over again throughout the movie!- Tim Meadow’s family all repeating “Say Whhhhhaaaaa?” or having a gigantic raft come out of a tiny place.
6- Shaquille O’ Neal is apparently a man-God in this movie. I never would have thought his acting has gone downhill since “Kazam“. To be fair, he does look like he’s having a blast in this movie, and his energy is a highlight.
5- The humor. It’s your standard pee/poop/fart jokes that you would expect from any Sandler movie. No jokes and slapstick bits are memorable.
4- The CGI. Why in the green hell is there CGI in this movie? The Deer in the beginning, the tire going through town, all computer animated… In a down to earth comedy, it makes no sense.
3- The Product Placement- You could make a drinking game out of the amount of times product placement is used. Hell, one scene was literally a commercial for 5 hour energy.
2- Adam Sandler’s characters. Since 2010, every Adam Sandler comedy has had these things attached to his characters. 1) They’re rich, 2) They have a smoking hot wife/love interest, 3) The smoking hot love interest/wife must make out with him, and 4) He has to have an easy job that we never get to see him do.
This film is no different. He’s married to the only good character, Selma Hayek. He’s a rich Hollywood agent. He’s got a huge house, and we never get to see him do his job.
How does that relate to the audience? What about that lifestyle makes any member of the audience sympathize with him or actually care for him throughout the story? “Oh it’s because his personality is so likable“. Re-read #10 and talk to me.
1- I didn’t care for a single character in this movie. Not one of them didn’t had a likable quality. Adam Sandler’s a loving parent to his kids, but does barely anything for them. Kevin James’ kid is a complete idiot, but he won’t tell him because his wife says it’ll ruin his confidence. Chris Rock barely spends any time with his family. David Spade has a teenage son he’s meeting for the first time, remains a complete jerk and suddenly he and the kid like each other.
There is a silver lining though. This movie is forgettable. Happy Madison Productions and Adam Sandler can keep going this route for the rest of his career. Every year they can spew out horrible film after horrible film, and it’ll make money.
But they won’t be memorable like “Caddyshack” or “Airplane”. They won’t be as quotable as “Monty Python and The Holy Grail“, “Dumb and Dumber” or “Anchorman”. Most importantly, they’ll always be compared to Sandler’s best works like “Happy Gilmore” as not being as good as that.
I give this film a -17.8/4. It’s as funny as “Schindler’s List”
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