There are many bad movies in the world, but for an hour and a half of my life, I was pretty sure I was watching the very worst cinema has to offer. Words cannot describe the excruciating experience of trying to suffer through “Grown Ups 2,” with it’s wit and humor limited to bathroom humor and over-the-top slapstick. Somewhere, Eadweard Muybridge is likely crying that he invented the tools for such a putrid movie to be created.
This is normally where I’d try to write a summary of the plot of the film, but here’s the kicker: the movie really has no plot. It’s just a day in the life of these four guys (played by Adam Sandler, Kevin James, David Spade and Chris Rock), who cause a variety of wild and crazy antics in their hometown. Their wives get little to do except be either annoyed or apologetic, their kids say the darndest things and a variety of celebrities smile and wave and act as if this isn’t one of the worst career moves they could make.
IMDB notes that this movie is technically a comedy, but if it is, then the designation of that genre has been damaged beyond repair. The movie’s idea of humor is little beyond farts, the occasional swear word and pretty much a form of bullying; unless you’re Adam Sandler (who according to this script is the perfect human specimen), you’re just another target to be made fun of. Watch out, cross-eyed KMart employees, overweight janitors and bald men! This movie will make fun of your very existence to no end simply for what they perceive to be humor. Also, guys: it’s 2013, enough with the mean jokes about homosexuality (courtesy of Taylor Lautner).
The main four actors are obviously here just to get paid and go on a nice vacation, so they seem to be having much more fun than us. A gaggle of Saturday Night Live and special actors appear, with supremely talented people like Jon Lovitz, Andy Samberg and Steve Buscemi, none of which are used well enough to utilize their talents properly, although Buscemi does get the movie’s only chuckle in his 80’s themed costume. Also, the deplorable creature known as Nick Swardson does; something, I really don’t know what he’s doing this whole time except for making fun of bipolar disorder and causing a ruckus in a KMart.
I wish the film also had some kind of plot to go with it, as sometimes it feels like a bad 80’s sitcom mixed in with a variety of atrocious SNL skits. I’m horrified at the prospect that someone at Columbia considered this, in any shape or form, an effective plot, but then again some people think Adam Sandler is funny, so anything is possible I suppose. The movie’s large array of characters leads many to be forgotten for several parts of the movie, with many a plotline left unfinished, especially anything not involving the four main characters.
With a script that seems more fit for a sitcom (you can practically hear the studio audience laughing and reacting to the program’s shenanigans), the only time I chuckled during this movie is the thought of someone preferring this over the much more hilarious “This Is The End.” Perhaps more of a sign of society’s dwindling appreciation of quality cinema than an actual film, “Grown Ups 2” is a vulgar and unfunny abomination.
