And he’s more adrift than ever in Grown Ups 2, more a tour guide than a character, (sleep-)walking through the movie. For all his attempts to cultivate a softer, more Everyman-ish vibe (attempts that have been enormously lucrative, mind you), he seems adrift when he doesn’t have a shtick. That much-derided film was a welcome throwback to the disreputable Sandler of yore, who was once at his best when he went broad, playing surreal jerks and man-children. But I consider myself something of an Adam Sandler fan I even liked last year’s That’s My Boy, the dud whose failure may well have helped lay the groundwork for this, the actor’s first sequel. Look, obviously, Grown Ups 2 wasn’t made for critics.
ROB SCHNEIDER GROWN UPS 2 MOVIE
It makes the first movie look like The Maltese Falcon. In Grown Ups 2, which is set on the last day of school, our heroes are now all living in the same small town together, and everybody’s pretty happy, so there’s little to motivate the action.
The first Grown Ups was pretty lazy, too, but at least it had a throughline - a 4th of July weekend that reunited these characters after they’d spent years apart, as well as a variety of parenting- and marriage-related challenges that helped move the story along. I can’t quite believe I’m saying this, but his presence is sorely missed here.)
(The original film also featured Rob Schneider. Director Dennis Dugan and star Adam Sandler’s follow-up to their 2010 hit, this sequel is about a group of grown men - played by Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James, and David Spade - who long to regress amid the mounting responsibilities and concerns of adulthood. It’s hard to do justice to the absurd laziness of Grown Ups 2. You’d think a movie that includes a scene where Taylor Lautner’s crotch is eaten by a giant deer couldn’t be all bad.