Score: 0/5
Grown…Ups…2…
Now, I had no plans on seeing this when it was in
theaters. In fact, I made a vow to stay as far away from it as possible.
However, as much as I wanted to tear this movie apart based on the abysmal
trailers and reviews, I couldn’t fairly criticize it since I hadn’t seen it.
So, with the introduction of my “Second Chance Reviews” series, I thought I’d
give this movie a fair criticism by watching the whole thing and writing a
review. Now, before I begin my immense critical thrashing of this sequel, I
want to address something: I didn’t totally hate the first “Grown Ups.”
Of course, I’m not saying it is a good movie; there are
still some moments of pointless toilet humor and a complete absence of conflict
or story. On the other hand, the actors were likable and had good chemistry on
screen together. It wasn’t too painful to watch, in fact, it was kind of nice
to see these real-life friends interact on screen. Now…for the sequel…I’m going
to try my best to be civil with this review, but let me tell you, it’s not
going to be easy. That is because this pile of vomit deserves to be chucked
into the nearest back alley trash can.
All of the likability of the first “Grown Ups” is gone,
and in its place is a cringe-worthy series of gross-out gags and bad puns
strung together by robotic dialogue. The humor in this movie is on the level of
a grade-school dropout and just to demonstrate how atrocious the jokes are,
allow me to provide a few examples. WARNING: the mere description of these “jokes”
can be harmful to the human brain.
Let’s start off with the very first joke to start off the
movie. Adam Sandler’s (I’m not even going to bother looking up his character’s
name) daughter leaves the front door open and a deer enters his bedroom. His
wife (played by Salma Hayek) wakes up and startles the deer, causing the deer
to urinate all over Adam Sandler’s face and mouth. The deer proceeds to run
down the hallway and urinate on Sandler’s son in the shower. Now, this joke was
in the trailer, so if this was one of the funniest scenes according to the
marketing team, I’d hate to see what they consider to be unfunny garbage.
Though to its credit, it pretty much sums up the movie, and such a joke is the
perfect way to start a horrendous abomination.
Other jokes that Sandler seems to think are comedy gold
are scenes involving a man accidently eating Cheetos that were stuffed up his
nose, “burp-snarting” (which according to the movie is a burp, a sneeze and a
fart in perfect sequence), and an effeminate male cheerleader licking bird
feces off of a windshield. These jokes are only part of what seems like a
constant barrage of audience-insulting toilet humor.
Now please…for those of you who actually find this funny…please
explain to me why such unpleasant gags are considered funny to you. If I were
to meet someone who thought that licking bird droppings of a window was funny,
I would think they have problems. So tell me, why on God’s green Earth do you find
this repulsive, lazy disgraceful “humor” enjoyable. I’m just baffled here; can
you tell me why this is worthy even of a chuckle?
Not only is a lot of the humor disgusting, but most of it
is just lazy and predictable. In one scene, a psychotic bus driver (played by
Nick Swardson of the box-office-disaster: “Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star”)
walks past a bathroom display in a K-mart and falls asleep in a nearby bed. When a
staff member tries to get him out of the bed, he wakes up in a semi-conscious
state and uses the toilet (complete with lots of “hilarious” farting sounds). The
minute he walked by that toilet display, I knew that they were going to use
this ridiculous joke. This joke isn’t even new; it’s been done before on an
episode of “Rugrats” and in “Jackass: The Movie.”
This movie is so lazy, that it even has to flat out
explain the jokes to the audience. In one scene, Adam Sandler is at the
supermarket with his daughter. A gay aerobics teacher that his wife thinks is attractive shows up and the daughter calls him “stud muffin.” This would have been a
passible joke on its own, but she literally says “Mommy calls him stud muffin,
so I call him stud muffin.” Do the filmmakers honestly think the audience isn’t
smart enough to get the joke without bluntly explaining it? Was this film truly
made for the half-witted?
Not to mention, the dialogue is robotic and extremely
forced. The way that the characters’ lines were written and delivered reminded
me of “Birdemic: Shock and Terror,” but not in a funny way. It almost seems
like Sandler just came up with a bunch of terrible jokes and slapped them
together with a script that even the worst fanfiction authors would be ashamed
of writing.
Saying that this movie is an insult to filmmaking,” would be an understatement. I could quote Roger Ebert’s review of “Caligula”
by saying that “Grown Ups 2” is “sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash.
If it is not the worst film I have ever seen, that makes it all the more
shameful: People with talent allowed themselves to participate in this
travesty.” However, even saying something that harsh seems like honoring this
rancid middle-finger of a movie.
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