Grown Ups 2: Lack of Effort Painfully Apparent

Remember those last golden days of SNL? Yea, I don’t either. Not that there weren’t any, it’s just that I was like 10 at the time and they seem like a distant memory to me—and I’m pretty old, so if I barely remember them, then most people reading this probably don’t even know what SNL is.

I say this because people like Adam Sandler, David Spade and the late Chris Farley were the front men for one of the several golden ages in SNL’s illustrious history (and actually, to be fair, the age of Will Farrell a few years later was pretty great, too). They were men of sarcastic, immature, slapstick genius. These are the very men who shaped the magnificent, god-like sculpture that is my sense of humor.

I can imagine there is a whole demographic, of kids wondering why some old, fat guy named Adam Sandler gets to star in 2-3 crappy previews of movies they definitely aren’t going to see every year.

I wish I could sit them all down, put clamps on their eyelids to hold them open, and force them to watch old 90’s SNL episodes and Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, the Wedding Singer, and The Waterboy. And then I’d follow that up by making them watch a week-long torture video laden with subliminal messaging about not making crappy memes that consistently ruin my morning glory—this last thing might be a little off-point but it’d be worth it, don’t you think?.

Anyway, let’s be honest, If all of us had to bust our humps as hard as guys like Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Rock, and Kevin James have—wait screw Kevin James, I hate that guy and I have no idea where he came from or why anyone would ever put him in front of a camera for any reason. Ok, so, leaving out Kevin James…if all of us had to bust our humps as hard as the rest of the cast of this movie has had to do over the years, and then we finally ended up making millions and millions of dollars to the point of not having to even try anymore, then we would probably just give up give up too. I respect them for that. If I was a multi-millionaire, I wouldn’t give a damn about pleasing any of you idiots either.

But make no mistake about it, even though I respect them, Happy Madison Vol. 12: The Adam Sandler still doesn’t give a sh*t edition, I mean Grown Ups 2, directed by Jeff Dugan and Written by Fred Wolf and Tim Herlihy, all of whose careers were only made, much like this project, because they came attached to Adam Sandler, is just a god-awful movie.

Their brand of humor used to be so effective. Jabbing you with silly, and terrible, jokes yet still round-housing you in the face with several brilliant and sincere moments to let you know the bad jokes were just, in fact, a joke, and that they still had enough talent and wit to make you laugh with them instead of at them.

Grown Ups 2 contains this same formula, except they either decided to remove all the brilliant jokes, or just didn’t care enough to actually make any. Movies like Funny People (2009), while not the best movie ever, shows that Sandler still has that magic ability make fun of people in the same way an annoyingly honest 10 year old can, so I’m going to go with he just doesn’t give a damn.

His movies centered around him playing some type of caricature of someone we looked down on, who had the honest, juvenile charm to make the normal characters (and the audience) feel like dicks for the heartless, grown up things we do, and endear us enough to join in on his attempts to beat the bad guy caricature he was always up against. While the plots and themes to his movies were all basically the same, at least it was a simple platform to for his brilliant comedy.

Now days, his movies, like Grown Ups 2, are comprised solely of caricatures, who are neither endearing nor funny.

If this was a movie for kids, I would say it’s almost pretty funny. Old guys getting peed on by deer, Bus driver’s eating Cheetos out of their noses, and Shaq constantly dancing is ALMOST funny to me, so I’d imagine 6-12 year olds would find it hilarious, but then again the characters in this movie cuss like sailors, so whose bringing their kids to this?

If you’re over the age of 18 I just can’t imagine you finding this movie funny, if you’re under the age of 18 I just can’t imagine what you actually would find funny given some of the stupid clothes and music you young whippersnappers wear and listen to these days, so maybe you’ll actually like this movie. If your generation can create Justin Beiber, then it also might be possible for your generation to like Grown Ups 2.