Las Vegas Weekly

• Tweet
• 
• Print
• 

The Details

Grown Ups

Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade

Directed by Dennis Dugan

Rated PG-13

Beyond the Weekly

Grown Ups

IMDb: Grown Ups

Rotten Tomatoes: Grown Ups

Let’s hope Adam Sandler, his buddies Kevin James, Rob Schneider, Chris Rock and David Spade and his most frequent director, Dennis Dugan, had a great time on their movie vacation Grown Ups, because the audience isn’t really invited. Only the most cursory try is made at things like characters, jokes and entertainment for the customers. We get the usual ancient attempts: faces plowed into piles of excrement, farting, peeing and juvenile stabs at sex talk, with Rock dreadfully miscast as an effeminate house-husband, while the best humor probably happened offscreen.

As kids, the five friends won a basketball championship. Now their beloved coach dies, and they reassemble for a funeral and a fun July 4th weekend! Somehow talent like Salma Hayek and Maria Bello agreed to play characters’ wives. Dugan’s last two films with Sandler at least had some outrageous, brave set-ups, but this feels like arrested development.