NO-HIT NOVEMBER, Bomb #3: GROWN UPS 2 (2013)

All through November we take a look at box-office bombs and widely maligned turkeys, to let you know if you might have missed a classic. Or not. 


Adam Sandler's Grown Ups 2 (while not strictly a bomb) is the reason I invented the term "torturously okay." It's the worst kind of comedy: it's not completely unfunny, but there's nothing in it that warrants its existence.  It's a movie made strictly for financial reasons.  Here is a collection of some of the top comic actors working today, serving a script that... well, I doubt there even was a script.  Three talented people are credited (Sandler, Fred Wolf, and Tim Herlihy), but I think Sandler and director Dennis Dugan just concocted some rudimentary comedy film scenarios and directed their cast through them loosely.

There are allegations that the film is actually a Ponzi scheme: it cost $80 million (much of it, no doubt, from product placement) to make when it could have been made for, I dunno, 1/80 of that.  The movie looks horrible; if you ignore the gargantuan cast of all-stars, it has the look of a multicamera sitcom.  The actors--many of whom are Sandler's friends--were no doubt paid handsomely, and Sandler and crew were granted the abnormally large budget on the faith that he and the stars would grant them considerable returns at the box office.

It worked.  The movie made $133 million domestically and about $246 million worldwide, proving that the rest of the world has no right to criticize any of America's crassness.

I can understand why Sandler has chosen to do it this way.  He's the cinematic equivalent of Weezer, the iconic '90s group.  After releasing a risky, personal album for which they were harshly criticized, they retreated back into bubblegum pophood and haven't released anything good since.  Sandler flirted with the idea of being an actual respectable actor: he was terrific in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love, and was pretty good in Mike Binder's otherwise disposable Reign Over Me.  But lately it seems like he's been scared back into his comfort zone, content to headline dull lowest-common-denominator duds like Just Go With It and Blended.

Admittedly, I wouldn't have given a thought to watching Grown Ups 2 if not for two Kiwi gents, Tim and Guy, who started a quite entertaining podcast this year--"The Worst Idea of All Time Podcast"--for which they watch the film once a week for a year.  It sounds completely idiotic--the film is not only inane but practically contentless, with very little substance worthy of description, let alone discussion--but actually, it's brilliant.  Even necessary.  When people around the world are spending $246 million to see Grown Ups 2, something is wrong.  It's a cinematic Wolf of Wall Street; it pumped up its penny stock script with big name actors and high quantities of bodily humor, then sold.  Tim and Guy are the Kyle Chandler character, exposing the scheme.

I should reveal that I haven't seen Grown Ups 1... but really, why should I?  Grown Ups 2 isn't a Godfather Part II which fills in the blanks of its predecessor.  There's no plot; the movie's 101 minutes are loosely structured around a backyard party at Sandler's house which everyone in town attends.  With few exceptions, no character learns anything during the course of the film.  Each one of its four leading guys--Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James, and David Spade--leaves the film pretty much as they found it.  Sandler is a violent lout, Rock is a passive-aggressive fool, James is a punching bag, and Spade... I'll come back to him.

A look at the characters' names should give you an idea of how much real thought was put into the film: Officer Fluzoo, Principal Tardio, Mama Ronzoni, Bumpty McKenzie.  The "story" threads seem to have been purchased in bulk, partially eaten, from the sitcom factory.  Character arcs are set up and dropped.  For example:

• Rock tells us early in the film that his wife (Maya Rudolph) has forgotten their anniversary, and that this will give him capital to spend later in the marriage.  An interesting premise.  Never followed through.
• James is constantly visiting his mother because he feels he doesn't get respect at home.  His wife (Maria Bello) tries to make up for it by taking him to a cheerleader car wash, which turns out to be a male cheerleader car wash--ho, ho--and that's pretty much the end of that.
• There's some momentary stuff about Sandler being insecure about having a new baby with his wife (Salma Hayek), which is apparently resolved in the end, but I really can't figure out why.

The only part of the story that the movie follows through with is Spade's arc, in which he finds out rather suddenly that he has a child he never knew about.  The kid, Braden (Alexander Ludwig), is supposedly 16 but looks 30, and makes Spade feel uncomfortable, but the two eventually find common ground and build a relationship.  Spade, dare I say, gives the only well-thought-out performance in the film, and is the only character who changes at all during the film.  As a result, the scenes between him and Braden are kind of sweet and moving.  Ludwig has fun as the kid, though his dialogue seems to have been written for a Neanderthal type, when the actor looks more like an overgrown boy-band Kurt Cobain.

Is the movie funny?  Well, sometimes.  A few of the gags do stick, but most of the ones that work are subtle, improvised, and rapid.  Sandler compatriots Peter Dante, Jonathan Loughran, and Allen Covert give reliable background performances that contain some of the movie's best chuckles.  Jon Lovitz, as a lecherous gym janitor, has some of the funniest moments in the film, and prompts more laughs with one nonsequitur than the rest of the actors get with the movie's many painfully labored set pieces.  Most are set up for the characters to find funny: when ice cream shop owner Colin Quinn is fixing the soft serve machine and it looks like he's pooping, they all laugh and laugh and we sit silent.

Basically, anything that was intentionally put into the movie doesn't work.  The sub-plot about Kevin James's functionally illiterate son isn't funny.  A brief introduction in which a deer enters Sandler's house and pees on everyone: not funny.  The male cheerleader gag: not funny, and wasteful of cameos from several SNL alums who are doing better things now.  Nick Swardson's histrionic performance as a drugged-out school bus driver: annoying.  The many gags targeted at Spade's girlfriend, a female bodybuilder who's frequently called "he": very not funny.  In fact, none of the female performers are given much to do: not even Cheri Oteri, who appears as Sandler's ex-girlfriend of sorts and has no effect on any of the film's happenings.

The main actors, Spade excepted, are shockingly underwhelming.  Usually any of these guys and gals, Sandler included, would be a highlight of the movie he or she is in.  Imagine Chris Rock reduced to playing a schlub, Maya Rudolph as a dutiful wife who occasionally bursts with stereotypical Tyler Perry-like Mad Black Woman intensity, Kevin James as a doormat, Maria Bello barely in the film, and Tim Meadows, one of the most reliable deadpan comic character-actors working, being forced to gawk and mug in every scene.  Meadows's catchphrase is, apparently, "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?" He uses it as a response to everything, and presents it as a key laugh line, akin to "Dyn-o-mite!" or "'eyyyyyyy." I surmise that either it was explained in the first film, or it's a private joke between Sandler and friends that the audience isn't allowed in on.

The numerous bit actors redeem the film a little bit from the boredom induced by its stars.  To say they steal the show would imply there was a show to steal.  Steve Buscemi, who is for some reason a regular in Sandler films, is good for a few laughs as a driver's ed instructor.  Shaquille O'Neal is fun to watch as an imposing but shy police officer.  Director Dugan has a brief role as a doctor examining Sandler's son; neither the premise nor the scene is funny, but his delivery is spot-on.  Rob Schneider appears nowhere in the film, and for that he deserves the most praise.

Oddly, the most laughs in the film are delivered by the least likely suspect: Taylor Lautner, who takes his role as an ornery frat kid just seriously and straight-faced enough.  The scenes in which he and his bros (who include Sandler's nephew Jared as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger's son Patrick) taunt Sandler and his crew of old farts, exchange elaborate high-fives and ridiculous handshakes, and perform rage-induced backflips work exactly in the way they're supposed to.  I never liked Lautner as the heartthrob in the Twilight movies, but he might have a future playing heavies like this.  He's very good.

** out of ****

"The Worst Idea of All Time Podcast" can be found on iTunes.

NOTE: Dennis Dugan now works, I believe, full time for Sandler, as he's primarily directed vehicles for him and his colleagues since Happy Gilmore.  As an antidote for this one I invoke his debut film, Brain Donors, an often hilarious modern Marx Brothers film, with John Turturro in the Groucho role.  It proves he knows his stuff, and may be only minimally to blame for this mess.