Quick Review: Grown Ups 2 (2013)

GROWN UPS 2

BY CHRISTOPHER HASKELL
NOVEMBER 3, 2013

With zero laughs and more bewilderment than anything, “Grown Ups 2” squanders the first film’s good fortune and makes it dreadful. Adam Sandler brings back the group of friends from the first film, including Chris Rock, David Spade, and Kevin James, as Sandler’s character Lenny has moved his family back to his hometown. It’s this setting that brings Shaq, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and Taylor Lautner into one of the most unfunny films of the year. Facing old bullies from school and new bullies from the college campus nearby, the screenplay for this film reads like a mad lib of bad ideas, none of which are executed with any grace or even through-line, leaving this to be one bad joke after another. As none of these comedians are ever very funny, I’m hard-pressed to even acknowledge this film as a comedy, with constant dead-end story-lines, like Lenny’s son playing football and hurting his leg for no apparent reason whatsoever. Perhaps this is a sign that Sandler is completely out of ideas and is way past his prime, or perhaps its a failed attempt and recreating a mediocre first film at best, but whatever it is, I hope it goes away and never comes back.