Grown Ups

This is a comedic low brow 'The Big Chill' played for laughs and trying to make some points about parent and kids and relationships and material things are not important starring some rich Hollywood actors.

The death of their old basketball coach causes some of the winning basketball team of 1978 to reunite. Adam Sandler is a rich Hollywood agent with a hot wife, Salma Hayek, spoilt kids and a nanny. Kevin James has a 4 year old who still drinks breast milk, Chris Rock has a wife who works whilst he is a stay at home dad, Rob Schneider lives with an older woman and has 3 kids from previous relationships who turn, two of them simply to provide eye candy for the audience.

We have some gross out jokes such as urinating in a water-park pool, the dead coach's ashes being thrown over food, a boy breast feeding etc. Some spoilt brats too busy texting and wanting the finer things in life on demand.

Over the weekend the kids enjoy the simpler things in life and learn to get along with other kids and grow up a bit. The adults too learn to value their loved ones but in a slight story some of the 'issues' come out of the blue.

Still it is sporadic fun, watchable and Steve Buscemi pops up to provide the biggest laughs.

Pros: 1. The film contains a heart-warming message to value family and family-time, in addition to not taking your loved ones for granted. Which is what you want from this type of comedy.

2. Adam Sandler (Lenny Feder), Kevin James (Eric Lamonsoff), Chris Rock (Kurt McKenzie), David Spade (Marcus Higgins) and Rob Schneider (Rob Hilliard) all have amazing chemistry together, it's obvious they're good friends off screen.

3. The comedy entails the friends ripping on each other. Not only does it produce hilarious moments, but it feels firmly grounded in reality as that's how male friends are.

Cons: 1. The stock score enlisted to ram home emotions the film wants you to feel is annoying and insulting as the film clearly feels the audience incapable of understanding context.

2. All of the main characters get together because of their high school coach's death, but after the first 15 minutes, it's quickly forgotten about. It's obviously used as a cheap plot device to get the movie going as it has no lasting impact on the movie.

3. Most of the soundtrack is stale and seems as if it was used solely to fill up the silence.

4. Steve Buscemi (Wiley) is criminally underused as he's just brought in as a minor side character towards the end.

5. The messaging, though commendable, is rather forced via its execution.

Five childhood friends reunite for their basketball coach's funeral. It's some 30 years after their championship game as a bunch of 12 year olds.

This movie works for one reason only. It's the chemistry and comradary between the five leads; Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, and Rob Schneider. The stories and quite frankly the ladies are mostly unimportant. They really need to give them some more funny stuff to do. They need to spread some of the stupid and silly stuff around. It works better with the bromance. The more time those five can spend together alone the better.

Hollywood has lost the art of being funny. Mainly because everything has been done beyond the subtle. Short attention spans, filth masquerading as entertainment and too much freedom without consequences has reduced what's seen as funny to banal dick jokes.

You know what's worse? Reading the sanctimonious crap written here in this forum. I hate that some contributors want to coerce our agreement to their opinions by suggesting we have no taste if we disagree.

Well, there's plenty of rubbish being peddled as comedy but like I said, I've seen worse.

The overriding feeling I got was that the cast was having fun. Seemed natural with lots of ad lib. So what? I had fun too. So what!

I had very low expectations for Grown Ups, so I was surprised that I actually liked this movie. The jokes are predictable, and the plot is almost non-existent, but I laughed more than I thought I would. I also enjoyed seeing a group of friends just hang out on the screen. Adam Sandler is a genius. He took a vacation with his buddies and got paid to do it.