Older, not better

Grown Ups
DIRECTED BY: Denis Dugan
STARRING: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David Spade
CERT: 12A
You can’t help but have a soft spot for Adam Sandler and his gang. When they get together for a movie, it’s like hanging out with your friends – some weekends are more memorable than others, but it’s always fun just having them around.

Grown Ups is a little bit different. It’s more like a class reunion – you get the odd glimpse of what it was you used to like about some of these people, but it’s obvious everyone is trying too hard and it’s only the goodwill of old times that makes it bearable at all.
Which is not a million miles away from the film’s plot – if you can call such a ratty, threadbare thing a plot.
When their beloved old school basketball coach dies, five friends get together for his funeral and spend Fourth Of July weekend at the lake cabin where they celebrated their only championship victory all those years ago.
Lenny (Sandler) is now a wealthy Hollywood agent, with a trio of spoiled kids. Eric (James) is in the lawn furniture business and apparently doing great. He’s married to Sally (Maria Bello) and they have two kids, including a four-year-old boy who still breastfeeds.
Kurt (Rock) is a stay-at-home dad of two children, who gets neverending grief from his domineering wife and her grumpy old mother – who lives with them only because someone in the Sandler crew still thinks that every film should have a “funny” granny.
Continuing in that vein, weepy vegan hippy Rob (Schneider), who always did like the older girls, arrives for the occasion with his wife who is 30 years his senior. Rounding off the team is Marcus (Spade), the HIGH-lariously seedy single ladies’ man.
Over the weekend, they scatter the coach’s ashes, play arrow roulette, learn about the tooth fairy, have marital spats, go to a water park (oh go on, give a guess what happens there), teach the kids to love the simple things in life and have a rematch with their childhood basketball rivals, still bitter over losing that famous game. Oh and get closely acquainted with Rob’s grown-up daughters, two of whom clearly did not inherit his looks.
There are occasional laughs here, but Grown Ups is really a bit of a mess. There’s no real imagination in the script and where the great gags might have been once upon a time, director Denis Dugan settles for slapstick or childish toilet humour – though careful enough not to overstep the family-friendly boundary.
Maybe that’s what’s wrong – everyone feels stifled by the rating, but nobody thought to hire a writer who could do sharp comedy for all the family, stuff that might allow the likes of Sandler and Chris Rock to let loose without turning the air 40 shades of blue.
As it is, they do what they can with what’s in front of them, but all of the main cast are upstaged by the great Steve Buscemi, who makes a brilliant cameo. More of that would have been great.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid
DIRECTED BY: Thor Freudenthal
STARRING: Zachary Gordon, Robert Capron, Rachael Harris
CERT: PG
Adam Sandler would have done well to borrow a couple of the scribes who contributed to this script, along with creator Jeff Kinney, on whose cartoon novel it is based. Their plot is – like that old saying about history – just one thing after the next, but they do at least have the ability to make viewers of all ages laugh.
It’s the likeable story of Greg Haffley (Gordon), a deluded young boy who gets a bit of a shock when he discovers he is not universally popular when he arrives in middle school – a strange American invention which, by my daughter’s account, is a hellish bridge between elementary and high school.
Greg can be a bit of a git but he concludes that the answer to all his problems – which include a female worst enemy who can beat him up – is to distance himself from his overweight best buddy Rowley (Capron), who must be what’s holding him back from his obviously deserved social success. Greg chronicles all of it in a journal (not a sissy diary), so that when he’s famous he won’t have to answer questions about the years he spent surrounded by morons.
It’s all very predictable and its message is ancient, but it’s good fun for all ages and the young actors are talented and charming – particularly Robert Capron as Rowley.