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About Jon
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Let’s go to the movies! I love the movie experience, study what happens on the screen and am writing about it to help you with your movie going decisions. Hopefully something in the blogging of a film’s big elements – screenwriting, cinematography, directing, acting, visual effects, sound, and editing (and sometimes automobiles) – will help movie fans discern where their entertainment dollars should go. I’ve been blogging about movies on 99x.com since April 2008 and have been listening to 99x since moving to Atlanta in 1996. I’ve worked on the Olympics and short films that have appeared at Sundance and other film festivals in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. I have a Master’s degree in film from Florida State University and regard film school as one of the best experiences of my life.
I currently live in Atlanta with my wife and two labs; love baseball, music, family and friends, good food, and of course movies. Just to blog down thoughts from an eyewitness perspective I avoid reading other movie blogs or reviews on a new release until I’ve posted my own. All references to box office results or cast and crew are culled from boxofficeguru.com, boxofficemojo.com, or IMDB.com. Wikipedia is not used in the writing of this blog. Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/jonlamoreaux for additional movie updates.
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Jon's Movie Blog
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Jun
25
Written by:
Jon Lamoreaux
6/25/2010 4:00 PM
Looks as if Adam Sandler who wrote this film learned a few things working with James L. Brooks on Spanglish (2004) and with Frank Coraci on Click (2006) because Grown Ups, Sandler’s 30th or so feature film, has that life lessons learned feel to it with the substance of family and friends as its framework. Here’s a bunch of guys—Kevin James, Rob Schneider, Chris Rock, Sandler, and David Spade—who as friends in real life get together in Grown Ups for the funeral of a childhood mentor. They each bring their wives and kids, except Spade who’s single in the film, and all stay afterwards at the summer lodge they visited as tweens, before tween was a word. The premise sounds like grown-up stuff, which I was concerned about after seeing the trailers, but Grown Ups never gets too serious to lose the Sandler brand of comedy usually involving an adolescent sense of man-child humor: jokes that often play on bodily fluids, noises, shapes, and functions. And believe it or not that’s a good thing. It’s consistent with what Sandler knows, what he’s had a success with, in films like The Waterboy or The Wedding Singer, both from 1998. But Sandler’s greatest strength as an actor, and as a filmmaker, is what he seems to carry with him in life, which is humility, a certain shyness you often see in him…in interviews, sometimes mumbling his words, fidgeting in his seat, holding his hands nervously together in his lap. When he puts that on display in front of the camera it solidifies a personality trait we don’t often see in movie characters, or in celebrities, today. An unpretentious way of behaving we expect grown-ups to be examples of.
The Story: But don’t let me lead you to believe the film is preachy. Not at all. In fact, the film opens with the boys playing basketball in a school gymnasium full of cheering fans. Their coach is distilling instructions from the sideline, then later toasting them for giving him his only championship. Thirty years later the guys are attending the coach’s funeral and sticking around to reacquaint themselves, and their families, with the kind of summers they enjoyed as kids on the lake. There is very little if any talking-down to. In fact if there are any lessons to be learned it’s in the actions the grown-ups or the kids take, the accidental revealing of the tooth fairy for instance by Sandler’s wife played by the beautiful Salma Hayek and the cancelation of a business trip for the sake of re-learning the art of skipping rocks across water.
The Goods: We really get a sense the guys are having fun on excursions they take together, in the woods, to a water park, while fishing, on a hayride, at a fourth of July celebration around the lake. Then there are all the jokes and one-liners which at times seem ad-libbed like these comedians gathered around the campfire throwing off insults and comedic jabs, making humorous observations of one another, and told the cameraman to let it roll. Some work, some don’t and I’d say more fail than succeed but it all seems good natured between the friends. Schneider’s character, whose first name is coincidently Rob puts together a mix-tape that always seems to be playing and so we hear music from Eddie Money, Cheap Trick, AC/DC, The J. Geils Band, The Romantics, Bad Company, Fleetwood Mac…music of their childhood era.
Films like The Big Chill (1983) really set the bar high for this kind of genre; most films trying the reunion-at-the-lake film fail considerably, such as Indian Summer (1993). Gosh I despised that movie. And that’s what I feared Grown Ups would be. In anyone else’s hands it probably would be but with the script by Sandler and direction by Dennis Dugan (Happy Gilmore (1996), Beverly Hills Ninja (1997), Saving Silverman (2001)), the film surpassed my expectations. I love the cameos too by many Saturday Night Live alumni including Tim Meadows (The Ladies Man (2000), Mean Girls (2004), Semi-Pro (2008)), and Colin Quinn, Maya Rudolph and what appears to be Norm McDonald with a bathing suit wedgie from a water slide. The only ones missing are Phil Hartman and Chris Farley, who will always be missed.
Collectively the films of these comedian actors have garnered over a billion dollars for Hollywood. That’s impressive. It’s these guys that should be doing the Ocean’s movies; they’re the alt-version of Sinatra’s Rat Pack because they seem more rooted in reality and closer to “Joe Six Pack” than George Clooney and his gang could ever pretend to be. I’d love to see Adam Sandler and his guys take on the Clooney bunch. The Budweiser drinking Massachusetts townie types versus the metrosexual, Gucci wearing gourmet types. Oh but there is a sense of team with the Grown Ups as they encounter childhood schoolmates they played basketball against in school. This just gives way to more jokes and plot strategy that keeps the film entertaining and enlightening in terms of what our guys choose to do and what not to do, again distilling lessons to each other, their children, and the audience. And more than in any film I’m seeing Schneider, Rock, and Spade here trying out some real acting chops.
The Flaws: It’s always inevitable that after so many good times occurring on screen that a meltdown takes place that has all characters venting in one way or another about their current state of affairs, how life hasn’t been what they’ve made it out to be, how they’ve made mistakes, or lied, or spent too much time away from family and friends in favor of work, texting and video games. It’s the film’s only real weak point considering it attempts to get more serious in this moment. You can tell everyone is stretching a bit, the actors like Spade and Schneider especially but I can’t fault them for that because it just takes them to the level I think Sandler and Dugan are trying to reach at times, which is that James L. Brooks level of dramatic, human frailty, situational comedy you see in Terms of Endearment (1983), Broadcast News (1987), and As Good As It Gets (1997). Unfortunately it’s not what Sandler is known for and is in high contrast to the fart jokes and Steve Buscemi comedic cameos. I think Sandler will improve with this, however and morph these two sensibilities seamlessly in future films.
The Call: Before I even saw the film I was prepared to say Grown Ups would be a good renter just like all of the other Sandler comedies that are no brainers on a Wednesday night on TBS or TNT, films like Mr. Deeds (2002) or Billy Madison (1995). But that would be wrong, because Sandler makes going to the movies like going to see old friends. How can you say no to that? Grown Ups is a feel good summer film to see on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon especially with the July 4th holiday around the corner. And it is director Dennis Dugan’s best effort to date. Best of all, Grown Ups is a great example of Sandler’s branding genius; he’s constantly marketing his other films by stocking Grown Ups full of references and actors from most of his successful films. I can almost guarantee it’ll make you want to buy some of his DVDs.
Grown Ups is rated PG-13 for crude material including suggestive references, language and some male rear nudity. Really, Motion Picture Association of America? That’s how you’re describing the PG-13? Really?
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