Grown Ups

TedFlicks Rating:

$9.00 ticket on a scale of $0 to $13.00

DITCH THE FINAL REEL, A DUMB SUBPLOT, & SOME VULGARITY AND THIS FEEL-GOOD FLICK COULD BE AN OSCAR CONTENDER

Here’s a dirty little secret: Most movie critics never pay to see a movie. The studio flacks invite us hoping that we’ll adore whatever it is for which they shill. Or we get credentialed to film festivals as members of the press and still don’t pay. Accordingly, the most shocking development in film this year to your critic has been the rise in price to $13.00 in Manhattan for a ticket to a feature film. I paid for the last few pix I reviewed because I was not invited to the press screenings. I have to keep adjusting my value scale for price inflation. Trust me on this. The pix are not getting any better. We are not paying for increased productivity. It’s just price inflation.

That said, “Grown Ups,” the latest Adam Sandler vehicle, is a very good picture. What keeps it from being a great picture is the old rule of architecture, “Less is more,” attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Here’s what your critic would cut: Inconvenient urination, noisy flatulence, some vulgarity involving Steve Buscemi in a full body cast feeling the breast of a very pregnant Maya Rudolph, and a relatively useless subplot involving revenge for a basketball game played in 1978. That would cut about ten minutes from pic, leaving it a respectable 92 minutes and no doubt delighting exhibitors who could cram in one additional screening per day.

This is not to say that “Grown Ups” should not be over the top. Any picture that casts Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Rock, Kevin James, Maya Rudolph, Rob Schneider, Maria Bello, and Joyce Van Patten (what a joy to see her running on all eight!) has to be over the top. The ensemble is nearly Marxist — of the Groucho sort. Several scenes appear to be improvised, with Rock, Spade, and James leading the way. Slapstick abounds.

Plot hinges on the death of a beloved basketball coach — the five guys were his only championship team in the CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) in a New England town in 1978. They are summoned to the funeral. Flashbacks provide exposition. The most successful of the five (Sandler’s Lenny Feder, now a Hollywood agent — don’t ask how he got into the CYO) rents the lake house where the team celebrated its championship for the Independence Day weekend (which follows the funeral). Each of the guys has gone his own way and the discontents of middle age have erupted. Sandler’s Feder seems to be emotionally closest to the situation. His kids text their nanny while in the same house. They don’t play outside. They’re addicted to video games.

The reunion is Sandler’s attempt to get his kids to behave like kids, to play outdoors, not to think about “packing for Milan” with mother played by Salma Hayek, a world famous dress designer on her way there for fashion week. Sandler’s Feder is feel good pic’s pied piper, a role he plays well.

Eventually the generational jokes give way to fun, and much is resolved for all the families (Spader is pic’s only single guy) reunited. The picture could end there.

But no. It goes on for another ten minutes in which the CYO championship game of 1978 is replayed 30 years later on the Fourth of July before the entire town where it took place — with the same opposing players who have bugs up their tushes to get even with Sandler and his crew.

There is a time to yell, “Cut!” and that is it.

Kudos to the principal players. All of them excel. Kudos to the technical crew. Pic is largely flawless. Semi kudos to helmer Dennis Dugan and to Sandler and Fred Wolf, who share writer credit. Tom Costain’s editing is up to par, but a few gags are telegraphed.

“Grown Ups” is rated PG-13 in the USA. There is really nothing in it that will damage young minds, and to many of them pic’s vulgarity may be a plus.

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