Warning: Movie Spoilers Ahead!
Hello fellow movie buffs! My blog, currently launching, is all about movies and will cycle through multiple genres. The first genre is: Comedies. To begin, I want to recommend and critique one of my go-to comedies, Grown Ups.
Grown Ups is an Adam Sandler classic, released in 2010. It stars Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Maya Rudolph, and Salma Hyek. It didn’t do well in the theater, but it was able to get a sequel, Grown Ups 2.
This movie is all about laughs, from the beginning to the end. It starts off with our five friends, Lenny, Eric, Kurt, Marcus, and Rob, playing elementary school basketball in 1978. They win the championship, a feat proudly announced by their coach. Fast forward 30 years, these friends have separated and have lives and families of their own. The sudden death of their beloved basketball coach reunites the gang, and their families, for a 4th of July weekend in a lake house.
The humor and banter in this movie is great because the actors and actresses themselves are friends; a lot of the lines were actually improvised as the cast joked off with one another. This is a family-friendly movie, full of heartwarming moments - like when all of the kids create cup phones with strings so they can chat around the house (since electronics were banned for the weekend).
Adam Sandler is known for creating great comedies, and his expertise is evident in his casting choices of his friends. The lighthearted script allows the audience to watch stress-free, making this a perfect movie for sick or busy days, when you want to get in a few laughs.
Of course, no movie is perfect. Grown Ups does a good job of balancing humor and creating realistic characters, but the audience has to wonder: why does Adam Sandler play the only successful character from the original friend group? Though it’s a small issue, it’s still there. Kurt is an underappreciated stay-at-home dad, Marcus is a casanova who can’t settle down, Rob has had three failed marriages and is on his fourth with a much older woman, and Eric lost his job and has been pretending to be fine for years. Lenny - Adam Sandler - is a wealthy talent agent in Hollywood with a beautiful wife, three healthy children, and a nanny. Comparatively, Lenny’s character is doing much better than the rest. Coincidence he’s played by the biggest name and writer of the plot? I don’t think so. Anna Smith, a movie critic for Metro summarizes this perfectly: “Sandler’s script has one or two laughs, but… [it] lacks the self-mockery.” This is evident in how Sandler is the only successful character, and he makes more cheap shots than he receives.
But don’t just take my word for it, watch it and see for yourself - and let me know what you think in the comments!
Smith, Anna. “Adam Sandler rounds up the Grown Ups for a woeful comedy holiday.” Metro.com, 2010 August. https://metro.co.uk/2010/08/26/grown-ups-film-review-492126/.
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