Watch This Instead Reviews Grown Ups Movie

Hi, this is Mike of substream.com and this is an episode of Watch This Instead for the
weekend in the 25th of June, 2010. And recently if you’ve been watching any kind of TV
or listen to any kind of radio, you’ve seem the dudes from Grown Ups, Adam Sandler,
Kevin James really out there promoting their film Grown Ups. And I’ll give you a hint.
This is something that took me an embarrassing long time to realize that when you see
this incredibly famous people out there hustling, it’s a really good sign that their movies
stinks which it absolutely does.

You can understand with the genesis of this film came from, four of the five guys, Chris
Rock, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Rob Schneider, they all started together at the same
time, young kids, 1990 in New York on Saturday Night Live. And they were the “bad
boys” of Saturday Night Live. And can you imagine what it must have been like to be in
those hollowed holes of comedy? And then Kevin James, another guy who grew up in the
80’s, worked in the 90’s and he’s a standup. And he is funny too. And they were just “Oh
my god, let’s just make a movie where it’s just five of the funniest guys ever hanging out
and cracking jokes” a little bit older so they have wives and kids. They’re not these
young kids with no appeal to families. They’re older now. They have serious lives but
they still go to a cabin and sitting on a pier and say, “Hey, your wife farts a lot” or, “Oh
your kid is funny looking” or “What’s with your hair?”

And it’s like you’re being asked to pay $14.00 to hang out with some friends. And that’s
the thing is when I hang out with my friends, I don’t have to pay for it. And they’re still
funny.

Grown Ups is awful, almost unbelievably awful. It’s hard to credit in the middle of the
film that you’re watching five legitimately talented guys make a films this bad, and this is
coming from somebody that idolizes Adam Sandler. Things like Billy Madison and
Happy Gilmore are not just some of the funniest but also kind of the most cinematically
important films of 1990, but you’re not going to get into now. But I have no problem
saying that this movie stinks. It’s just brutally, awfully, unrelentingly unfunny even in the
scenes that the movie was designed to showcase. Even in the scenes where there are just
five guys, sitting on a pier, playing the dozens with each other, and cracking jokes at their
own expense. Even me seeing, these are the best scenes in this whole film. And they’re
still not very funny. It’s miserable. It’s miserable. It’s misery. It’s miserable, miserable.

There’s a joke, okay. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it but it’s a joke, inappropriately old
child breastfeeding, okay. That’s a joke. And they go back to that well like six times over
the course of the film. How many different words can Chris Rock come up with for a
lady that’s got a big toe? Nine, 18, how many times can five guys get grossed out by a
70-year-old woman being sexual? 106, how many minutes have you gotten your film?
That’s how many times they’ll go back to the same well with the same jokes.

Rent The Great Outdoors with Dan Aykroyd and John Candy and watch that instead of
Grown Ups. If you’re in Toronto, I think you can go see it at Toronto underground
cinema some time next week. Check their website for details. But if you’re not, just go
rent it. It’s from 1998 and it’s directed by Howard Deutch who got famous for directing
some of John Hughes’ scripts including Pretty in Pink and John Hughes produced The
Great Outdoors for him. It’s dumb. It’s full of goofy gags with mean animals that come
out of the woods and cause trouble, raccoons that talk to each other. But it has a story.
And some actual effort was put into making a film that had some scenes that were
something other than just rich guys that you intellectually know were funny because
you’ve seen them being funny in other movies at some point in the past.

Hang around and make fun with each other’s hair and the way that their clothes look.
Plus it's got John Candy in it who with each year that goes by since he died is looking
more and more like the genius that the smart people, me and you thought that he was
when he was still alive with us making actually funny films that had actual characters and
actual stories. And weren’t just excuses, sneak that little hand in your pocket and take 14
bucks out. It’s ready. I hope I don’t get shot in the G20 rides this weekend.