I am not a big Adam Sandler fan, but I do really like Spanglish, The Wedding Singer, Reign Over Me, Happy Gilmore and Punch Drunk Love, while disliking Little Nicky, You Don't Mess with the Zohan and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, so I thought why not as the trailer was sort of interesting.
Sadly, I found Grown Ups a rather lazy effort. I did like how it looked, the locations and scenery are very nice and the editing and photography were also better than expected. The soundtrack was decent too, and I did like the first 10-15 minutes or so. I didn't like the acting much, but there is one actor who clearly puts gusto into his performance and that's Kevin James.
The rest of the cast range from adequate to below par, not helped by their uniformly shallow and unlikeable characters. Adam Sandler is irritating, Chris Rock underplays, Salma Hayek's acting is very forced often, Rob Schneider overplays and David Spade is rather limited and goes through the motions. The direction is not awful, but far from great, most of it is unexceptional while having the occasional flash of decency. The pace is uneven, some of the comedy scenes feel rushed and the more sentimental scenes feel pedestrian.
What spoils Grown Ups is the writing and story. The writing is pretty much awful, with clichéd and stale jokes and dialogue that made me groan rather than laugh. And then there's the story, which was very thin and predictable on the whole, with the comedy scenes rather forced and the sentimental scenes rather mawkish. All in all, not a complete travesty, but rather lazy and didn't do much for me. 4/10 Bethany Cox
Sadly, I found Grown Ups a rather lazy effort. I did like how it looked, the locations and scenery are very nice and the editing and photography were also better than expected. The soundtrack was decent too, and I did like the first 10-15 minutes or so. I didn't like the acting much, but there is one actor who clearly puts gusto into his performance and that's Kevin James.
The rest of the cast range from adequate to below par, not helped by their uniformly shallow and unlikeable characters. Adam Sandler is irritating, Chris Rock underplays, Salma Hayek's acting is very forced often, Rob Schneider overplays and David Spade is rather limited and goes through the motions. The direction is not awful, but far from great, most of it is unexceptional while having the occasional flash of decency. The pace is uneven, some of the comedy scenes feel rushed and the more sentimental scenes feel pedestrian.
What spoils Grown Ups is the writing and story. The writing is pretty much awful, with clichéd and stale jokes and dialogue that made me groan rather than laugh. And then there's the story, which was very thin and predictable on the whole, with the comedy scenes rather forced and the sentimental scenes rather mawkish. All in all, not a complete travesty, but rather lazy and didn't do much for me. 4/10 Bethany Cox