Today’s quick review: Grown Ups 2. On the last day of the school year, Lenny (Adam Sandler) plans a party for the town with his friends Eric (Kevin James), Kurt (Chris Rock), and Marcus (David Spade). Meanwhile, Lenny’s son Greg (Jake Goldberg) works up the courage to ask a girl out for a date, his younger son Keith (Cameron Boyce) deals with a bully, and his wife Roxanne (Salma Hayek) contemplates having another child.
Grown Ups 2 is a comedy that picks up two years after Grown Ups. Lenny and his family have moved back to his hometown, allowing him to be closer to his childhood friends and letting his kids have a more normal life. Grown Ups 2 keeps the same loose plotting and raucous, family-themed humor as the first movie. However, it struggles with problems its predecessor did not, including an unclear theme and a greater reliance on gimmicks and cameos.
Grown Ups 2 juggles an enormous cast. The majority of characters from the first movie return, including Lenny, his friends, their families, and their old basketball rivals. They are joined by an assortment of newcomers that include a pair of cops (Shaquille O’Neal and Peter Dante), the leader of a hostile fraternity (Taylor Lautner), and Lenny’s childhood bully (Steve Austin).
The huge cast is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it expands the focuse from Lenny and his immediate circle to the quirky characters of his home town. On the other hand, it dilutes the greatest strength of the first movie, which was giving a group of comedians free rein in a wide-open setting. Grown Ups 2 has time for Lenny and his family, but Eric, Kurt, and Marcus lose screen time to the expanded supporting cast.
As for its comedy, Grown Ups 2 takes more liberties than the original. Where Grown Ups took place in a normal world populated with some odd characters and peppered with slapstick, Grown Ups 2 cranks up the bizarreness. Every character is quirky, the slapstick is borderline cartoonish, and there is a tendency for the entire town to revolve around Lenny. The humor will still be entertaining for fans of Sandler, but it is more uneven than the original.
Grown Ups 2 is a fun pick for anyone who enjoyed the first movie and wants to spend more time with its characters. The jokes hit most of the time, the light tone carries through, and the additions to the world, although a little wild, are entertaining. But Grown Ups 2 is neither as focused nor as careful as the original. Fans of the cast should check out Grown Ups 2. Viewers who are on the fence may want to steer clear.
For a more tongue-in-cheek comedy with a similar focus on the main characters’ social circle, try Wayne’s World or A Night at the Roxbury.
[5.4 out of 10 on IMDB](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2191701/). I give it a 6.5 for erratic but enjoyable humor.