Grown Ups 2 - Review

GROWN UPS 2 is the barrel's bottom, certainly of this year. I have seen a lot of bad comedies this year, all nearly destroying the foundations of the genre, and there are still some misfires that are currently away from my critical grasp. But it will be a very tall, tall order to match up the sheer hate levels that this film generated from my brain. I could go on and on, using SAT-approved adjectives to describe all of the negative elements but I don't have to. I'll just be brief: GROWN UPS 2 sucks, Dennis Dugan sucks, and Adam Sandler sucks.


I once railed against BATTLESHIP for having one of the worst prologues ever, where a potential relationship at a bar hangs entirely around a chicken burrito. GROWN UPS 2 has now surpassed this lowly goal. Adam Sandler wakes up one morning next to his much hotter wife Salma Hayek. I don't care if they have character names because it is never important to know nor are you expected to. He looks to his side to find an adult deer staring straight at him and chomping on the chips he left on his bedside table. Hayek is frightened by this sight and screams, which then frightens the deer on to its two back legs. The creature then urinates heavily all over Sandler. The deer runs out, enters into the bathroom on the other side of the house and pisses on their oldest son in the shower. It runs downstairs, eats some dog food until it is hypnotized by a little girl's stuffed monkey and jolts out the front door to rip it apart. You see, the front door was left open all night by said girl because she wanted animals to come in. You'll also notice that this film educates you that deers are no longer herbivores, like to walk into people-populated areas, and somehow make their way up tightly cornered stairways to confront the beings that used to scare them away. I forgot to mention that the kids say they want to ride on the animal intruding on their house and that the scene ends with Sandler high-fiving the mailman because the deer has Hayek's bra on its antlers and Hayek has big boobs, ah-hyuck, hyuck, hyuck. Just, why?


I'm now expected to go over the rest of the plot but there really is none. It begins with the last day of school for the kids and splinters into everyone having random kooky events, sometimes slathered with a brush of excretions. For instance, three of the mains try to achieve Kevin James' superhuman accomplishment of simultaneously expunging gas in three different ways. Some college frats led by a stunt-casted Taylor Kitsch arrive later solely to be young douches and be trounced by the old douches in the end, seemingly straight out of an 80's flick. Speaking of the 1980's, I hope you enjoy the third act that legitimately gives up any sense of plot, just so everyone can dress up as 80's pop culture characters and party with The J. Geils Band of all freakin' acts. Despite all of these eccentric diversions, the film never sits down and explains what happened to Rob Schneider. To no surprise, director Dennis Dugan continues his poor techniques as a creator of shits and giggles. His standard sitcom direction is bewilderingly unexplainable (what the hell was up with Chris Rock destroying a soda can?) and his blue humor is overbearingly dreadful. Dugan can't even get product placement right: K-Mart is given extensive coverage for one long sequence yet the characters treat it as the toilet it truly is.


Of course, it wouldn't be a Sandler/Dugan party without a bottomless bowl of despicable misogyny and homophobia. All of the women have to be hot and preferably young because Sandler & his crew still need to blow a load in their pants despite all being nearly 50 years old. Apparently, even though you have Penelope Cruz, Maria Bello, and Maya Rudolph by your side, a man still needs to gaze at someone else's cleavage and stroke a boner during a child's ballet recital. That isn't even the most spew-inducing moment of the film. There's a scene where an entire female yoga class stupidly follows the creepy instructions of an intruding, clearly identifiable janitor. After this, you'll wonder where the cold shower stalls are at. If anyone dares to go against the Playboy mindset and achieve a different body style, such as a recurring female body builder, they are routinely shamed as a freak and theorized to secretly have a dick. Speaking of curb-stomping LGBT ideals, the movie features the most hypocritical treatment of gay men. There's a yoga instructor who's quickly introduced as being gay, for fear of women actually getting sexual satisfaction, and he ends up being competently normal. But he is only treated as a normal person after revealing his sexuality to Sandler, in the wake of the dope threatening to hurt him if he ever tries to woo his woman. However, Sandler and his buddies needed more flaming stereotypes, so The Lonely Island cameo as the leaders of a car-washing male cheerleader troupe, all of whom love sudsy balls and automobile fornication. To take it further into utter disgust, Nick Swardson later walks around in piss-stained briefs and Boy George make-up, desperately seeking any gay white male to kiss.


Swardson is the god damn worst person, place or thing in this travesty. His character is an exact replica of his own real life: a hanger-on of Sandler, whom tolerates Swardson solely for him to be the butt of jokes. There is no pity to give to this walking debauchery of poor taste. Sandler, "shockingly", is dreadfully boring, hardly giving any energy even when he's just eating potato chips. Kevin James, an actor who has often coasted by or actually be a shining light in a movie, finally succumbs into being a pathetic shell like Sandler. Unless he was purposely sandbagging his storyline as a lying mama's boy, I'm very ashamed of his work here. At least Chris Rock and David Spade get some brittle material to munch on and crap out some embarrassing moments of sentimentality. No such luck for the other SNL players, all of which have prominently awful cameos. A couple examples include Jon Lovitz as the aforementioned, pervert janitor, Colin Quinn and Tim Meadows reprise their tiresome roles, and Cheri Oteri sinks every scene she's in as a psycho "ex-girlfriend".


I hated the child actors, practically all of them in fact. Some might say that it's mean to criticize kids in films. Well, the kids are willing to be paid handsomely for their services and be displayed on movie screens all over the world, so we have every right to destroy their acting abilities and crush their dreams. The only ones able to escape harsh punishment and are actually okay are China Anne McClain, as Rock's wallflower daughter, and Ada-Nicole Sanger, as James' daughter with the weird fashion sense for shoes. The rest are all pathetic: Frank & Morgan Gingerich's skills match up perfectly with the intelligence of their character; Sandler's two boys and Rock's son are universally bland; Kaleo Elem annoys to no end as a poop-shaking, feral baby; and Alexys Nycole Sanchez continues to spew an ear-screeching voice and refuses to say a line without smiling. There's also Kamil McFadden, who is clad heavily in terrible makeup and plays the horrible long-lost offspring of NORBIT.


Let me point something out before I end this death certificate. GROWN UPS 2 is extremely bad but it's not on the same bad level as JACK & JILL. That film literally crumbs apart in front of your eyes, with every single shot having something wrong. So Sandler and Dugan at least have that going for them, which I guess is nice. But when it comes to child actors, I will gladly tolerate a monotone boy with a hamster taped to his back than listen to Alexys Sanchez' acting.



FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5