|
Grown
Ups
Like him or not, Adam Sandler has two admirable
traits. As a comic actor, he's extremely generous to others
onscreen, and he's loyal to friends old and new. Through
Happy Madison Productions, Sandler has made sure that his
buddies from college, Saturday Night Live and anyone
else that enters his circle have movie work at least once
a year.
This year, he put those traits into overdrive
with Grown Ups. Though somewhat entertaining, it's
overstuffed, just not with much resembling original ideas.
If you've seen any Happy Madison films before, you know
what you're getting into. Just remember that it's only the
shallow end of the movie pool.
Still, it's the best comedy ever made from
Jason Miller's That Championship Season. Instead
of a dark secret from the team's past, however, we just
get well-worn themes about growing up, the difficulties
of maintaining relationships and how kids today have lost
touch with the simpler pleasures in life. At least, I'm
pretty sure that's what I'll have confirmed on the blu-ray
disc pop-up commentary that I won't let my kids watch because
they'll be too busy playing outside.
Sandler plays the (relatively) sane center
of a group of friends bound together by one winning season
as a junior high level basketball team. Either they have
or haven't lost touch with each other over the years, depending
on which way is easier for a sight gag.
For instance, all the friends know that
the sensitive Rob Hilliard (Rob Schneider) has been married
four times, clearly know all the ex-wives and yet get completely
surprised to learn that he has grown daughters. Of course,
at least two of them (Jamie Chung and Madison Riley) defy
all known laws of genetics, so maybe that's why.
But that's the usual sloppiness of Grown
Ups. The script, credited to Sandler and Fred Wolf,
doesn't so much create characters as concepts, depending
on the actors' personas to carry things over the rough spots.
Rob took his pre-pubescent attraction to older women to
a wacky extreme with wife number four, senior citizen Gloria
(Joyce Van Patten). Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock) has become
a househusband to Maya Rudolph with a complete role reversal,
while Marcus Higgins (David Spade) has never settled down,
still very much a ladies' man. (And yes, Tim Meadows, the
actual Ladies' Man, has a small role here, too.)
Relatively new to the circle is Kevin James,
who latched on to Sandler in I Now Pronounce You Chuck
and Larry. Underneath his character might be a nuanced
performance, but since the movie doesn't really require
much, director Dennis Dugan - also a Happy Madison regular
- tamps him down.
Besides, Sandler needs to carry most of
the dramatic burden, as a super-successful Hollywood agent
who knows he's strayed too far from his roots. It doesn't
take the death of Coach "Buzzer" (Blake Clark) to tell him
that, but it sure gives him an excuse to try to change things
with his too trendy family.
What
follows is an affable weekend at a country lake house, gag
piled upon gag, but only the slenderest of plot threads
and conflicts easily resolved within a few minutes. Somewhere
in all that getting in touch with themselves, Colin Quinn
pops up as one of the members of the team these guys all
beat back in junior high, still stewing over the loss. Until
this character shows up mentioning it, the script doesn't
offer the slightest hint that there might have been some
controversy.
Who has time for plot when so many funny
people have to prove they're funny? Almost every complication
has to pause for all five comedians to get some sort of
joke in, and then when you throw in a cameo or five, that
slows things down, too. To top it all, Dugan may be a competent
director, but he's not particularly clever in his staging
or storytelling.
Then again, for most people who want to
see Grown Ups, he doesn't have to be. Like the plot
itself, the movie is an excuse for us to spend time with
people who amuse us, some more than others, maybe ogle a
few women in bikinis, and in its one or two lucid moments,
nod with wise acknowledgment that yes, that may be how it
is.
Or maybe, and this is the one point that
Grown Ups doesn't dare make, maybe we really are
too grown up for this.
|
