Monday, July 29, 2013

Movie Review: "Grown Ups 2" (2013)

Director: Dennis Dugan
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 41 minutes
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Adam Sandler reprises his role as Lenny Feder, who has moved his family back to his home town in an effort to lead a better, more quiet, peaceful suburban life, as opposed to living in Hollywood.
I'm going to be honest...this movie was so incredibly awful that after we got out of the theater, I was visibly and verbally angry. It's movies like this that make me weep for the future.

"Grown Ups 2" has no discernible plot whatsoever. It's just another opportunity for Adam Sandler to parade his friends who don't do anything other than Adam Sandler movies around for the bajillionth time. It is comedy at its lowest point: poop, fart, penis, and old people jokes.

This movie taught me a lot about how not to be a parent, not that I will be one any time soon (and/or EVER). If people don't parent their children, they will be confident! If they let them get wrong answers right (IE: 7+ 9 = 79), that's apparently better than mildly damaging their confidence. Yeah, wait until they get into an actual classroom and know nothing, therefore becoming the ridicule of everyone in class, potentially damaging the child's confidence for his entire duration of K-12 schooling! REAL CONFIDENCE BOOSTER!

I am more angry watching this movie than I was watching "The Heat" for two reasons. One, "The Heat" was supposed to be crass. Two, "The Heat" is marketed towards adults and rated R, NOT RATED PG-13 and geared towards kids and young adults as "comedy." This movie was jammed down kids throats, marketed as a family comedy, despite it being riddled with references to sex, drugs, alcohol, partying, etc.

The worst part of this whole experience? There were people laughing. There were people clapping at the end of the movie. Multiple people laughed so hard they jumped out of their seats. The woman behind us not only laughed so loud that it hurt MY ears, but when she was talking to the girls with her, she repeatedly spoke of what was coming up in the next scene, indicating that SHE HAD ALREADY SEEN THE FILM. People had been to this movie multiple times and still laughed insanely hard. Have we regressed as a movie-going audience into thinking that poop and fart jokes are so funny that we feel the need to out-laugh each other in the theater?
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The biggest "jokes" in the movies were already referenced in the trailer, but, some examples of the jokes this movie hopes audiences think are funny are: a deer urinating on Adam Sandler and his teenage son, who was supposedly masturbating in the shower; a baby with a load in his diaper dancing around and wiggling his poopy butt; the burpsnart, a combination of burping, then sneezing, then farting, Kevin James' proudest moment in the movie; perverted guys staring at women's jiggling cleavage throughout the movie; the urine-soaked underwear of a schizophrenic drug addict who also drives school bus for the town; over-the-top college aged pricks who feed into every known college frat-boy stereotype; a woman who is clearly a female bodybuilder becoming the butt of all sorts of man-centric jokes, even overtly stating that she has a penis, whose response is to have an angry face/grunt/flex; the fact that the good looking yet gay yoga instructor is subjected to numerous disgusting sexual advances by every woman in the yoga class...the movie tells joke after joke like this, all of which fall flat, hoping to try and create a new catch phrases that horribly gullible kids might pick up and retell to their equally horrible friends.

This movie makes "R.I.P.D." look like "Schindler's List." 

Adam Sandler used to be an actor you could count on for a few laughs here and there. We grew up in a time where we enjoyed Adam Sandler's body of work through middle school and high school, often quoting films like "Happy Gilmore," "The Wedding Singer," and even "The Waterboy"...so where and how and why did he make this shift? 
Does Adam Sandler have so much money now that he stopped caring about the films he's making? It seems like he only makes movies now for a paycheck, and not for the good of cinema (not that he ever did anyways, but his movies *used* to be better than this). 
Was getting his own production company, Happy Madison, the beginning of his downfall? 
Have we just gotten too old, or have his movies never been funny? 
How can we laugh at penis and sex jokes in a movie like "Anchorman" and yet not find this film uproariously hilarious? Are they all one in the same? Somehow, the jokes in "Anchorman" vs. "Grown Ups 2" show the importance of delivery, comedic timing, and context. Filmmakers, writers and directors need to get back to learning the importance of telling a joke versus having someone fart and expecting it to be funny.

Do you like torturing yourself? If so, yes, see it. If not, just watch paint dry for an hour and 41 minutes...it will probably be more entertaining. 

My Rating: 1.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 1.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 4.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 8%
Do we recommend the film: AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!

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