Grown Ups Review

Growns-Ups has no plot. It is a lively, boisterous film, but basically like a bunch of guys catching up over beer and dirty jokes. It feels like the kind of gathering where anything you say can and will be twisted into a lowbrow gag on you.

You could be one of 3 kinds of guests to such a party - you might want to slap your thighs and roar at all the buffoonery and be a part of it; or might want to be less noisily amused and harmlessly hang around, enjoying the fun; or you might just get grossed out and leave.

The film is about these school chums who meet up after 30 years at their basketball coach's funeral. Each of these buddies has a life quirky in its own way.

Lenny Feder (Adam Sandler), who is married to Roxanne (Salma Hayek), is a big shot in his career. He has snobbish and annoying sons who can't have fun without their Playstations, and whose idea of fun in Milan involves watching "boobies on Italian television".

Eric (Kevin James) has 2 kids, one of whom is 4 and hasn't stopped breast-feeding yet. Rob (Rob Schneider) is married to a woman 30 years older to him; and has hot daughters from his previous marriages, who wear almost no clothes, and who the rest of the men in the gang can't help leching at. Then, there's Marcus (David Spade), a womanizer.

There, that's mostly what the range of the film's humour is. To provide some semblance of normalcy in the midst of all the bawdiness, there's a house-husband Kurt (Chris Rock) who's perennially being harassed by his domineering working wife.

The film is filled with one-liners, puns, physical humour, and Yo Mama jokes, and it's impossible that absolutely none of them would bring out a chuckle from you. However, the fact that there is no plot to the movie stares at you all throughout. The whole while it is essentially a pack of guys in conversation, and telling one another "guy" jokes, with each of them trying to be funny every minute no matter what.

Sandler, the actor, prefers to watch by the sidelines and let the other actors run the show. They're all as funny as an easy, casual comedy will let them be, and performances aren't a problem here. David Spade is given some of the crudest lines, and Rob Schneider makes do with being a bitter vegan who everyone makes fun of.

Salma Hayek has nothing to do except be an accessory to the proceedings, but the other women pitch in with some moments, icky as they (the moments) are.

Watch Grown Ups with people who belong strictly to your generation, for best results. For better results still, be a guy; and be dirty.