Hi all, here is the new review from Just Dave about Grown Ups. Not much to say parta from the fact that I can’t wait to be one. Just waiting for IT to drop and I will be there. Here's the review:

If you aren’t a fan of Adam Sandler movies I would stay away, if you aren’t a fan of David Spade, Rob Schneider, Chris Rock and Kevin James’ movies then I would definitely avoid this like it was nobody’s business. Grown Ups is most likely 2010’s most impossible movie to review. There is no plot. There are no real performances. It just happens.

Grown Ups has an impressive cast for sure; Adam Sandler headlining the above mentioned, as well as Maya Rudolph (the under-rated Idiocracy), Maria Bello (A History Of Violence) and someone called Salma Hayek...but nobody really does anything... everyone is playing a variation of themselves, and they just hang out for two hours in a beautiful lake house. Of course the movie is somewhat generic and formulaic, and the soundtrack is so hackneyed that you barely notice it.

With every ounce of my better judgement I know that this is a horrible movie.

But I loved almost every second of it!

I guess with a film like this it’s pretty clear what you are expecting. The film-makers and cast aren’t exactly gunning for seats at the net Academy Awards. All that it’s trying to do is one thing: be funny, and if enjoy the odd bit of low brow humor done very well then you will love this.

When you see a cast like this, who all have so many hits and misses, you can’t help but walk into Grown Ups just feeling like it’s going to be awful. Happy Madison Adam Sandler’s production house is behind the movie and the company is almost the very definition of ‘hit and miss’. After their disgusting Paul Blart: Mall Cop they followed up with the enjoyable You don’t mess with the Zohan and then they...well...Rob Schnieder and David Spade are in Grown Ups too, and it’s hard to even remember their movies. Rob Schnieder has long since become a joke after South Park’s biting rip on him (the ironic thing is that he could very well be the funniest of the cast, if Kevin James wasn’t in it)...but then there’s Adam Sandler and Chris Rock; two hilarious comedians that trip up all the time, but manage to give us a Funny People or a Good Hair every now and then.

Suffice to say these people can be funny. They can be very, very funny. And in this movie i thought that they were. Only David Spade was particularly annoying, but he gets ripped on by the other cast the whole time so it works. In a movie where Kevin James and Rob Schnieder are actually funny you can only think it’s because of Sandler’s smarts. Sandler co-wrote this film, and he clearly knows his friends enough to utilize their strong suits. Did I mention this film was funny?

Grown Ups has no intention to be anything else.

The situation of the movie (to call it a ‘plot’ is stretching) is that everybody in the cast plays themselves, and they go on a holiday to a beautiful lake house, theres something about spreading the ash of their beloved deceased coach, but it’s really just an excuse. It’s kind of a rip on The Big Chill but since their is no real story I wouldn’t go that far.

The cast spend the movie ripping on each other like they are on a Comedy Central Roasting of each other. They fall over and the jokes are low brow, pissing and physical comedy fill every scene, but thats what it is. Like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore it never attempts to do anything but showcase how funny the cast is.

Grown Ups is the type of movie where one character says “what do you want to do today?” and the other says “go to the water park” and then bam! All the characters are at the water park for the next twenty five minutes. The cast has a lot of fun, and because they are basically playing themselves they are able to interact with each-other just like you would imagine them to in real life, hence the movie winds up seeming like nothing but a holiday with these very funny people. They are having fun and frankly it just rubs right off onto you, and for me this is a reason worth watching the movie for.

Ultimately how much you like Grown Ups will depend on how funny you think the movie is. Against my better judgement, against everything I thought and had experienced of this hit and miss cast, I was laughing. I was laughing constantly, and since that’s all this movie tries to do, that should probably be all it should be judged against.

So go and see it, and if you don’t laugh, well there’s always Judd Apatow.