Review: Grown-Ups

Every so often films are said to have a dream line-up for example The Expendables comibation of Stallone, Willis, Schwarzenegger, Lundgren, Jet Li and others will have action fans foaming at the mouth. Simiarly fans of juvenille comedy may see the line-up of Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David Spade and Kevin James as their dream. However after those people actually sit down and watch Grown-Ups they may, in fact they will, change their minds. The film's set-up is that the coach of a school basketball team dies and the five key members of the team are reunited at his funeral. They are an over-worked Hollywood agent with spoilt children and a workaholic wife (Sandler), a hen-pecked house husband (Rock), a much-married over dramatic health nut (Schneider), a boastful underachiever (James) and David Spade essentially playing the character he always plays an aging womaniser. The five go to live in a beach house with their wives, children and Chris Rock's mother-in-law, a role that was tailor-made for Martin Lawrence's Big Momma character to return but sadly this didn't happen. This is so the five men can scatter the coach's ashes in the way he requested and while they are there they are all meant to be learning life lessons. However not a lot does get learnt and instead there are a lot of scenes with the five sitting around perving over teenager girls, injuring themselves or each othre and generally having a laugh. A small plot is tagged onto the film's final third in which the team they played in their original game want a rematch but that's about it.

There are a lot of things wrong with Grown-Ups but the toilet humor, non-PC Jokes and the 'physical comedy' were all a given. The main problem is that the emotional journey that we're meant to go on doesn't happen or is completely rushed. All men have problems Sandler's kids are spoilt and have lost touch with the real world, Rock's wife doesn't appreciate him, James' four year old son is being breast-fed and James is also out-of-work, Schneider needs to reconnect with his daughter and Spade is growing up without a family or anyone to truly love. Some of these issues are completely unresolved and apart from Sandler's story the others are all rushed. In addition to this, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello and Maya Rudolph are collectively wasted as 'the wives' while Steve Buscemi also pops up in a thankless cameo. There's no doubt that the five friends had fun while filming but I also think that a non-scripted film of them just going on holiday together would be much funnier than this shambles.