Grown Ups (film)

Grown Ups is a 2010 American comedy film directed by Dennis Dugan and written by Adam Sandler and Fred Wolf. It stars Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, and Rob Schneider. The film tells a story of five lifelong friends who won their high school basketball championship in 1978. They reunite three decades later for a 4th of July weekend after learning about the sudden death of their basketball coach.

Grown Ups
Theatrical release poster
Directed byDennis Dugan
Produced by
Written by
  • Adam Sandler
  • Fred Wolf
Starring
Music byRupert Gregson-Williams
CinematographyTheo van de Sande
Edited byTom Costain
Production
company
Distributed bySony Pictures Releasing
Release date
  • June 25, 2010 (2010-06-25)
Running time
102 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$80 million[1]
Box office$271.4 million[1]

Grown Ups was produced by Sandler's production company Happy Madison Productions and was distributed by Columbia Pictures.[2] Sandler, Rock, Schneider, and Spade all joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in the 1990–1991 season; supporting cast including Colin Quinn, Maya Rudolph, Tim Meadows, and Norm Macdonald have also been SNL cast members. Despite receiving generally unfavorable reviews from critics, it grossed $271 million and led to a sequel, Grown Ups 2 (2013).

Plot

In 1978, five childhood friends Lenny Feder, Eric Lamonsoff, Kurt McKenzie, Marcus Higgins and Rob Hilliard win their junior-high-school basketball championship. Afterwards they celebrate at a rented lake house. The friends' coach, Robert Ferdinando, whom they nickname "Buzzer", encourages them to live their lives in a similar way to how they played the game. 30 years later, Lenny has become an ambitious Hollywood talent agent who lives with his fashion-designer wife Roxanne and their daughter Becky and sons Greg and Keith. Much to his chagrin, Greg and Keith are spoiled brats. Eric claims that he is now the co-owner of a lawn furniture company and hates that his wife Sally still breastfeeds their 4-year-old son Bean (their older child is daughter Donna). Kurt is a stay-at-home dad to Andre and Charlotte; his wife Deanne, the family's primary breadwinner, is pregnant again and her own mother Ronzoni lives with the family. Rob, nicknamed Carrot, has been divorced three times and has custody of daughters Jasmine, Amber, and Bridget; his current wife Gloria is 30 years his senior. Marcus is a slacker and lothario. All five friends regularly harass each other in comedic fashion: Lenny for being wealthy, Eric for being overweight, Kurt for being henpecked, Rob for being eccentric and for having a much older wife, and Marcus for being sexually juvenile.

When the friends learn that Buzzer has died, they reunite in their hometown with their families, a first in three decades. Intending to pay tribute to Buzzer at a private funeral, Lenny rents the lake house for the Fourth of July weekend for his friends. But Roxanne has planned a fashion show in Milan, Italy, forcing Lenny to leave early. At the lake house, Lenny despairs that his sons would rather play video games than play outside; he pushes them to follow his friends' children outside and has Eric demonstrate a rope swing next to the lake, but Eric chickens out because the swing is too high above the water and accidentally hits a nearby tree and a bird. That night at a local restaurant, Lenny talks to his old nemesis Dickie, who is still mad at him for an "error" in the match, where his winning shot should not have counted since he allegedly had his foot outside the line. Dickie challenges Lenny and his friends to a rematch, but he declines. The next day, while the friends spread Buzzer's ashes in the woods, Rob has a confidence crisis, regretting his failed marriages. His daughter Jasmine arrives, then he relaxes by fishing with his friends. After roasting Rob, the others elect to cheer him up with a game of arrow roulette. Rob wins by staying in the circle for the longest time, but the arrow impales his foot when it flies back down; he snaps at Gloria for using a maize-covered poultice. During all this, Rob's other daughters Amber and Bridget arrive; Jasmine and Amber are extremely attractive, and Bridget is a tomboy and looks almost identical to Rob. That night Lenny manages to interest the kids in talking on cup-phones, and Roxanne accidentally reveals herself to be the "Tooth Fairy" when Becky listens in. Thrilled that they're enjoying the kind of kid-fun that he used to, Lenny installs an extensive cup-phone network in the house.

Roxanne reluctantly decides to stay at the lake house rather than attending the fashion show. The friends visit a water park called Water Wizz, where Eric teaches Bean to drink regular milk directly from a carton, and Marcus repeatedly flirts with Jasmine and Amber and buys them skimpy bikinis. The families cause chaos throughout the park: Rob pushes a ride attendant down a waterslide when he insults Bridget for being less attractive than her sisters; Eric ignores Donna's warning about a chemical in the children's pool that turns urine blue; the spouses spot and attempt to attract a bodybuilder, then jeer at his high-pitched Canadian accent; and at the zipline attraction, Lenny and the group meet up with Dickie again, accompanied by his own group of friends and former teammates, including Wiley, who is severely injured after crashing into a shed while sliding down the zipline by his feet, which traps him in a full-body cast for the foreseeable future.

Lenny teaches his son how to shoot a perfect basketball shot, and the friends end the night dancing with their spouses. The next day, Roxanne busts Lenny for lying about canceling their flight before she agreed to stay, and he admits that he just wanted their kids to be normal for once. Eventually, everyone confesses how they feel with their lives: Deanne believes Kurt plans to dump her for the Feders' live-in nanny, but Kurt retorts that he only hung out with her because of Deanne's negligence; Eric reveals that he got laid off just before the trip and only acted like a big man so he wouldn't be the loser; Marcus had been feeling insecure about himself since reuniting with the old gang; all Rob admits is what everybody already knows: he wears a toupee. On their last day at the lake house, Lenny agrees to the rematch against their former opponents. At the game-deciding shot, Lenny purposely misses to gift Dickie's team a proper win so they can finally know what winning feels like—and he felt that his own family needed to know what losing feels like. Before the film's end, a drunken Marcus plays another game of arrow roulette, this time in front of more witnesses. Everyone fearfully takes off, but the still-paralyzed Wiley is unable to run away and the arrow impales his foot. He screams in pain and shouts "We win again!" before fainting.

Cast

Production

Filming commenced in Essex County, Massachusetts, in August 2009.[3]

Release

Box office

Grown Ups grossed $162 million in the United States and $109.4 million in other territories for a worldwide gross of $271.4 million against a production budget of $80 million.[1] Grown Ups surpassed Click to become Sandler's highest-grossing film worldwide.[4] Happy with the gross, Adam Sandler showed his appreciation by buying brand-new Maserati sports cars for his four co-stars.[5]

Critical response

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 10% based on 165 reviews and an average rating of 3.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Grown Ups' cast of comedy vets is amiable, but they're let down by flat direction and the scattershot, lowbrow humor of a stunted script."[6] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 30 out of 100 based on reviews from 32 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[7] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[8]

Connie Ogle of the Miami Herald referred to it as "the perfect poster child for this maddening summer of movie mediocrity."[9] Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail criticized what he saw as blatant commercialism, saying the cast "lob[bed] gags they surely disdain at an audience they probably despise while reserving their own laughter for that off-camera dash all the way to the bank." Richard Roeper went as far as to say that it was "a blight upon the bright canvas of American cinema", and that he hated it.[10] Tom Long of the Detroit News called it "trite comedy" and "total garbage."[11] On the other end of the spectrum, Lisa Kennedy of the Denver Post called it "crude and decent-hearted" and "easy, breezy, predictable."[12]

Awards

Rob Schneider was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor for the film, but lost to Jackson Rathbone for both The Last Airbender and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

The film won at the 2011 MTV Movie Awards for the "Best Line from a Movie" category, which it won for the line "I want to get chocolate wasted!", delivered by Becky, played by Alexys Nycole Sanchez.

Home media

Grown Ups was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on November 9, 2010.

Sequel
Main article: Grown Ups 2

A sequel, titled Grown Ups 2, was released on July 12, 2013. Dennis Dugan, the director of the first film, returned as director. The main cast, including Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Salma Hayek, Maya Rudolph, Maria Bello and Steve Buscemi reprised their roles, except Rob Schneider. New cast includes Andy Samberg, Taylor Lautner and Patrick Schwarzenegger. The sequel follows Lenny Feder as he relocates his family back to the small town where he and his friends grew up.[13] Like its predecessor, Grown Ups 2 received very poor reviews[14] but was still a box office hit.[15]

References
  1. Grown Ups (2010) Box Office Mojo
  2. Tatiana Siegel (2009-02-10). "Columbia pic gets Sandler and friends". Variety. Reed Business Information. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
  3. Shanahan, Mark (2009-05-18). "Adam Sandler et al. get to work on "Grown Ups"". Boston Globe. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
  4. "Adam Sandler Movie Box Office Results". www.boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved 2018-02-12.
  5. Bowman, Zach (11 November 2010). "Adam Sandler gives the gift of Maserati to Grown Ups co-stars". Autoblog.com. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
  6. "Grown Ups (2010)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved April 19, 2018.
  7. "Grown Ups Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved June 26, 2010.
  8. "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com.
  9. Connie Ogle, Grown Ups (PG-13): Five goofballs and a funeral, Miami Herald (June 24, 2010).
  10. Rick Groen, Grown Ups: How low can they go? Just watch, Globe & Mail (June 25, 2010).
  11. Tom Long, Review: Adam Sandler's 'Grown Ups' is a lazy, trite comedy, Detroit News (June 25, 2010).
  12. Lisa Kennedy, Movie review: “Grown Ups” — or are they?, Denver Post (June 23, 2010).
  13. "Grown Ups Sequel Planned". ComingSoon.net. Retrieved 2011-12-07.
  14. "Grown Ups 2 - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
  15. "Grown Ups 2 (2013) - Box Office Mojo". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
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