Adam Sandler’s been a movie star for a long time now, so even viewers who are allergic to his charms have been pretty well immunized against his brand of 12-year-old-boy-in-a-dumpy-man’s-body humor. But there’s still one thing that can chill the Sandler-averse to the marrow: the scene where the jejune hostility drops away so the movie can deliver a lesson about how to be a cool dad.
Please, not that! Show us David Spade’s naked backside again instead!
By the current standards of the jock-shock comedy, there’s not a lot of male nudity in Grown Ups, which is star and co-writer Sandler’s latest attempt to portray himself as something resembling an adult. Directed by longtime Sandler collaborator Dennis Dugan, the movie mostly sticks to the bad-boy classics: pratfalls, flatulence, sexual humiliation, public urination and nonstop insults.
Indeed, despite occasional attempts at plot and character, this is basically a roast with scenery: Sandler trades smirky, self-amused put-downs with co-stars Spade, Rob Schneider, Chris Rock and Kevin James. (Of these five, all but James joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1990.)