A sequel to the 2010 movie that generated the popular movie quote for that year- “I wanna get chocolate wasted!”, Grown Ups 2 sees four of Hollywood’s funniest guys come together again in the summertime, on the last day of school. In the movie, Adam Sandler (who co-wrote the movie with Fred Wolf and Tim Herlihy) decides to relocate his family to his hometown, after having had so much fun the last time. He plans his return with the Fourth of July celebration so he can gather with his old friends and have a party. What he didn’t see coming was that the party would have 400 interesting gate-crashers. Spiced with the hotness of Salma Hayek and Taylor Lautner, and 400 other random funny people, you would think this movie would have made the Comedy of the Year list.
What should have been insanely funny and mentally delightful turned out to be an endless drivel of gross, poorly put together jokes and disgusting displays of sexual acts and stupidity. It was almost as if the movie was written with the intention of killing off the brain cells of the innocent viewers whose only crime was purchasing a ticket. While there is an endless flood of adjectives describing viewers’ experiences, a few are worth sharing here:
From USA Today: This eye-rolling excursion in toilet humor seems all the more tone-deaf given that Sandler is a few years shy of 50. His comic schtick has long been aimed at 13-year-old boys, but his latest efforts are an insult to adolescents of any age… Mystifyingly, the movie manages to emerge plot-free. Instead, it offers a succession of humorless gross-out gags, fat jokes, suggestive posturing, bullying, belches and pratfalls. Life is simple — and gross — in Sandlerville.
From Washington Post: he shtick must be rote by now, and, indeed, “Grown Ups 2” appears to have been made while engaging as few brain cells as possible… At times it seems to actually drain IQ points from its viewers while wasting a talented cast of “Saturday Night Live” alums, who are all capable of being much smarter and so much funnier.
From New York Times: This is pap, plain and simple: scattered raunch-lite devoid of emotional resonance. At best, it sells itself on the spectacle of a TV show’s cast reunion — and even then it disappoints. With the debacles of “That’s My Boy” and “Jack and Jill,” Mr. Sandler has increasingly squandered his comic capital. His onetime “SNL” brethren do themselves few favors — beyond a paycheck — by working in his orbit.
There you have it. Unless you’re a fan of Taylor Lautner (or Salma Hayek) and you would climb seven mountains and cross seven streams for them, there is no incentive to sit through this movie. Though it’s rated PG 13, it is inadvisable for a child below 17 to see it, if you care at all about their innocence.
Directed By: Dennis Dugan
IMDB rating: 5.2/10
Genre: Comedy
Rated: PG 13
