“Grown Ups” was about a group of five childhood friends who reconnect after their high school basketball coach passes away; in their hometown, they realize all their lives have gone off-track. Hollywood agent Lenny (Adam Sandler, of “Hotel Transylvania,” “Zookeeper,” “Just Go With It,” and “Grown Ups”) has allowed his children to become horrendously spoiled. Eric (Kevin James, of “Here Comes the Boom,” “Hotel Transylvania,” “Zookeeper,” “The Dilemma,” and “Grown Ups”) is powerless in his marriage. Kurt (Chris Rock, of “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted,” “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” and “Grown Ups”) is a stay-at-home dad, also with no power in his marriage. Marcus (David Spade, of “Hotel Transylvania” and “Grown Ups”) is a serious womanizer. And Rob (Rob Schneider, of “Grown Ups”) is unable to maintain a long-term romantic relationship. But seeing each other again inspired them to be better, to care about their families more, to be committed to their friendship, and so “Grown Ups” ended with a kind of saccharine sentimentality. Care for each other! And don’t forget to tell poop jokes!
And that same off-putting, uneasy mix of messages is at play in “Grown Ups 2,” which returns Sandler, James, Rock, and Spade (Schneider was supposedly “too busy” to come back). They’re all living in their hometown now, trying to raise their families right, and preparing for summer break, as the film takes place on the last day of school. But, things aren’t all perfect: Lenny is stressed because his wife wants to have another baby; Eric is hiding his rekindled relationship with his mother from his wife; Kurt is working as a cable man, with his marriage defined by tediousness and boredom; and Marcus has just learned that he has a teenage son. Whoops.
As everyone scrambles to deal with their issues, they also come into contact with a group of scheming, sneering frat brothers (led by Taylor Lautner, of the “Twilight” films), old childhood friend-turned-cop Fluzoo (Shaquille O’Neal), a former classmate who has remained obsessed and in love with Lenny through the years (Cheri Oteri), and oh, so, so many more tangential characters and subplots and asides. It’s all stuffed into a movie with no clear narrative or purpose; nothing develops into anything else. This is just a movie about a group of men who like to mock each other and ogle women and then mock and ogle, ad nauseam, over and over again, until you want to smash your head into a wall just to get out of this awful cycle.
Because what passes for humor in this movie is a deer urinating on people (the opening scene), or men crashing their daughters’ dance class not to watch their children but instead to creepily peer at their instructor like stalkers, or women being conned by a perverted man who is manipulating their aerobics class. On and on and on. Any time something negative happens to a female character here, it’s just shrugged off, whereas the men are able to fight for their reputations and encourage their children to stand up to bullying. But the movie itself is all about degrading and marginalizing women, presenting them both as defenseless and unnecessary of others to defend them. It’s a blatant, irritating hypocrisy.
Since “Grown Ups 2” ends with a nostalgia-heavy ’80s-inspired party and has a kind of male camaraderie feel, we’re supposed to brush off this rampant misogyny, this reliance on disgusting bathroom humor, this justification for amateurish childishness. We’re supposed to laugh at the term “burpsnarting,” which is burping, farting, and sneezing all at once. We’re supposed to think of “Grown Ups 2” as a family-friendly movie about coming together and still being able to laugh at a man defecating in a public place. Nope, no thanks. “Grown Ups 2” is everything wrong with comedy, and Sandler and director Dennis Dugan (a frequent Sandler co-conspirator who also directed “Just Go With It” and “Grown Ups”) should be ashamed of themselves. Or at least grossed out by how low into the gutter of humor they’ve sunk.
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