Customer Reviews

Grown Ups [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(50)

 

 

I loved this movie. The casting was great. All the characters were lovable and it reminded me of how I grew up as a kid. I thought it was definitely entertaining for people of all ages but especially those of us that grew up in a time where there were no computers, no cell phones, and we had to come up with our own games to entertain us. (without getting killed)It's an enjoyable, entertaining movie with a happy ending and it promotes spending time together as a family and the importance of good friends. What more could you ask for?? I highly recommend this movie. I saw it twice and I can't wait to see it again.

I desperately wanted to enjoy Kevin James in Paul Blart: Mall Cop. I still believe it was only his lack of a strong supporting cast that kept it from being truly funny and was also what made it woefully thin on laughs. This is thankfully not the case with Grown Ups. Here Kevin James is well supported by an excellent comedy team and it works very well. My wife reluctantly went with me to see Grown Ups saying that she didn't like "slapstick comedies". Well, she laughed much more than I have heard laugh her in a very long time and she came away saying that she really enjoyed the film. The film has done very well at the box office despite many negative reviews (as did Paul Blart: Mall Cop) and it does seem to be much more popular with filmgoers than film critics. I personally think it is a much better and much funnier film than Couples Retreat. It is hard to think of Kevin James as any character other than his The King of Queens "Doug Heffernan" and David Spade really just seems to be basically playing a character much like his Rules of Engagement one, Russell in Grown Ups. An added bonus for me in Grown Ups is the presence of the very lovely Maria Bello as the wife of Kevin James. I like the film very much and I had a great time. I will definitely get it on DVD and I hope there will be a lot of bonuses, especially some deleted scenes and maybe even a gag reel.

This movie felt like a Friars' Club dinner with half the one-liners missing the mark. Many of the jokes were forced and apparently not re-shot. Some of the jokes and situations were hilarious, but were then followed immediately by a clunker. It was like going to an expensive restaurant where one course would be outstanding, the next lousy. Overall, a bad experience. Nothing close to "The Hangover" and other movies that find their mark with oddball situations and shock comedy.

The story was good enough, but the writing and the delivery was often lacking.

They went for the gross-out factor in some of the situations (the old, sexually open wife, the breast-feeding mom with her 4-year old - in public), and they just didn't work.

This is one of Sandler's worst movies. Doesn't begin to compare to Big Daddy and some of his other classics. It struggled to include some of the warmth of his other movies, but at times did well in that area.

The way they inserted so many of Sandler's ex-SNL buddies into uninspired roles, it felt like Sandler was just giving his buddies a payday. He's probably the most successful guy in the bunch, and some of them have not had much work lately, except for David Spade and Kevin James, and maybe Chris Rock.

Salma Hayek was hot, as usual, but she apparently does not have comic chops. Better casting was needed.

So much about this movie didn't click. Maybe it was rushed through production. I was expecting an instant classic from this unbelievable ensemble cast, and was left very disappointed.

How can you not love this movie! It has a great cast who have all outdone themselves again. I saw this with a friend and we both laughed through the whole movie. I would definitely recommended getting this!!!

Who wrote the jokes for this movie? The jokes were like written for the 1920's or something. Very banal humor. I think whomever wrote the jokes were high or giddy (or both) and thought they would be funny because they were in such a giddy mood. If you like smart, zingy, perverted, or witty humor...then this is NOT the movie for you to watch. I guess they put all these "funnymen" together and thought the laughs would be handed to them. No wonder they were pushing this release so hard with all the actors promoting it on talk shows and NBA games...because it was a desperate move. Don't even rent this movie....you won't be able to get a laugh through the whole movie.

Like many people who watched this movie, I saw it because of the cast it featured. I like a good comedy and Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade and Rob Schneider are well respected and talented actors in their own way. I read many negative reviews about Grown Ups but the cast still made me want to see it. I am disappointed? Well, yes and no because I knew it wasn't going to be all that great but at the same I am because those actors have starred in good movies and would have you expect something a little better. All that considered, the film did reasonably well at the box office. The storyline goes like this: 5 childhood friends are reunited following the death of their beloved junior high basketball coach. They then decide to spend a weekend together at a lake house together and bring their families. As the title suggest you can expect to see grown up *ahem* people enjoying their moments together, rebuilding their relationships, catching up on what's been going on all these years and be immature adults. This storyline leads to interesting and funny situations and some not-so-funny as well, it hits and misses really.

I'm not saying the movie is terrible, because it's not. But it uses too many clichés and jokes you've seen a hundred times before (farts and such); it's a little predictable as well. There are some moments that you are likely to enjoy if you are a fan of these actors, I don't get how you could like these actors and hate the movie beginning to end. If you're a fan of the cast then you might want to see it, just don't expect a great movie out of grownups. I find it funny how the highest ranked reviews for this film are all 5 stars yet many reviewers are claiming this movie is horrible, it just proves how viewers will be divided when it comes to having an opinion for this movie. As far as I'm concerned, I enjoyed it for what it was and it was an entertaining film but it was nothing exceptional. 3/5 stars.

I will keep this short. The movie isnt as bad as people are saying. I went into this movie with low expectations after reading all the bad reviews, but its actually pretty funny. I think some people take movies too serious. Im just looking for a couple hours of fun, and something to keep my mind off the real world. This will do it for you. Good movie.

If you enjoyed seeing Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, David Spade and Chris Rock together in the 90's on SNL, then I recommend, just watching their old SNL skits again. In Grown Ups they obviously enjoy hanging out and making each other laugh since that's all the movie is about. They might as well have just recorded themselves unscripted hanging out and released it as a movie.
While the funny Kevin James is just wasted in all these Happy Madison movies as their new fat clumsy guy. Don't get me wrong, Chris Farley was hilarious, if you don't believe me, watch his SNL skits. But even he would have been wasted in this movie, even though he would have enjoyed hanging out with his buddies. The material is just flat though and these guys made each other laugh, more than they made me laugh.

I was excited about this, for god knows why. I mean, I have grown tired of Sandler, and I was never really a fan of Schneider, but Spade and Rock and particularly James have always made me laugh, or at least smile, so the prospect of seeing them all together in a `no holds bar' type family comedy seemed interesting, and promising. In the end though, this film is just awkward. Sandler has forgotten how to edit and doesn't know when to stop pushing a good thing when he has it. When you have scenes to establish friendships that consist of nothing more than five minutes of verbal jokes at friends expenses it becomes tired, redundant and, sadly, unfunny. This also felt like a lazily constructed comedic version of `Why Did I Get Married' too, and that's saying a lot since Tyler Perry's film was pretty lazily put together itself. The acting is hit or miss, but acting isn't the point here. It is the endless gags that suffer from being too overly compacted to the point where the audience never gets a break. It works in that you don't have time to dwell on the failed gags before one that marginally works catches your eye, but in the end `Grown Ups' feels hugely uninspired and preposterous. The whole `warm family moments' don't ring true and the loopy development of the actual families is so blatantly obviously manufactured that it takes away from the films marginal appeal. Thankfully Kevin James is funny and Maria Bello is hot. Outside of those two positives, `Grown Ups' is a clichéd mess of a film. The only reason I'm not giving it an F is because I kind of feel like this film is exactly what it wanted to be.

***1/2

When it comes to mainstream Hollywood comedies, we've all too often found that the quality of a cast is in inverse proportion to the quality of the film (i.e., "He's Just Not That Into You"). That being the case, I had expected "Grown Ups" - which features the likes of Adam Sandler, Salma Hayek, Kevin James, Maria Bello, Chris Rock, Maya Rudolph, David Spade and Steve Buscemi in starring roles - to be a real cinematic turkey. Imagine my shock, then, when the movie turned out to be, for the most part at least (and we'll get to the qualifiers in a moment), a surprisingly genial, laid-back and likable movie that generates a decent number of laughs without breaking too much of a sweat.

That is a particularly noteworthy achievement given that Sandler, not exactly known for either subtlety or restraint, is not only the star of the film but co-author of the screenplay as well (along with Fred Wolf). But somehow Sandler and company (the movie was directed by Dennis Dugan) have avoided the material-given temptation of going overly-broad with the humor, choosing instead to effectively downplay things most of the way.

Sandler plays Lenny Feder, a hotshot Hollywood agent with a fashion designer wife (Hayek) and two children, who spends a weekend in the country with a group of his basketball-playing chums and their families when the boys' beloved coach from thirty years ago passes away. The guys were all part of a championship team in 1978, and they've come together to honor the man who led them through the winning season, as well as to catch up with what each of them has been doing in the interim.

"Grown Ups" is far from a perfect comedy. For every sharply humorous insight it offers about the responsibility that comes with maturity, there's a crass joke or gross-out sight-gag to counterbalance it. It's almost as if the writers just couldn't help themselves, as if it were a part of their authorial DNA.

That being said, there's much to like about this movie, particularly the performances and the sweetness it conveys when it's NOT being juvenile and crass.