Movie Review Grown Ups

Grown Ups (2010) 

Directed by Dennis Dugan

Written by Adam Sandler, Fred Wolf

Starring Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Kevin James, Taylor Lautner

Release Date June 25th, 2010 

Published June 24th, 2010

Critics, like me, can decry the Adam Sandler brand of comedy all day. We do, we will, I will. But, we cannot deny its continuing success. Sandler is, arguably, the safest business bet in all of Hollywood. Even at his worst in garbage like “Bedtime Stories,” the worst film of 2008, bar none, Sandler still turns out his fans and returns on studio investments. That will not change with the release of “Grown Ups.” This thin excuse for Sandler to get his oldest friends together for a lakeside working vacation is exceptionally typical of the Sandler brand: dog doo, passing gas and copious pratfalls. It's not filmic poetry but fans of the brand do not care.

In “Grown Ups” Adam Sandler is Lenny, a 40-something Hollywood Agent married to a sexy fashion designer (Salma Hayek) and raising three spoiled kids who text their nanny to bring them things ,and spend most of their time in front of a flat screen TV. Lenny laments his children's lack of imagination but does little to change them. That is until Lenny is shocked out of his rich boy Hollywood idyll by the death of his childhood mentor and basketball coach, Coach Buzzer (Comic and Sandler crony Blake Clark).

Gathering up his wife and brats, Lenny is headed home to a lakeside retreat to meet his old pals and former teammates. There's Eric (Kevin James), the chubby one, whose wife (Maria Bello) is still breastfeeding their 4-year-old son.

Kurt (Chris Rock), a henpecked house husband under the thumb of his pregnant wife (Maya Rudolf). There is Marcus (David Spade), the single and loving ladies man. And finally there is Rob, a dopey thrice divorced vegan spiritualist married to a much, much, much older woman (Joyce Van Patten).

Beyond these minor character quirks there really is nothing to any of these characters. In the course of “Grown Ups” none of these characters evolve, deepen or expand our understanding of them. Sure, each is given an issue to play, like Sandler and his tech-obsessed brats, but each of these issues is resolved with little, if any, dramatic effort.

Like most Adam Sandler comedies, “Grown Ups” is an idea in search of a story or unifying theme that settles for being a series of occasionally funny gags and one liners. Sandler and his company Happy Madison don't so much develop screenplays really; rather, they come up with ideas, grab a camera and hope that something will come together in editing.

Nothing much comes together in “Grown Ups.” David Spade gets in a few good jabs. Kevin James falls down funny once or twice. Rob Schneider has a bit with an arrow that earns a chuckle but the good gags are few and far between. More often you get a lot of dead space in which the gang riffs in search of a punchline, often never finding it and allowing a scene to simply end awkwardly and unfunny.

None of my criticism of “Grown Ups” will matter to the Sandler cult. There is poo, there are multiple farts and the chubby guy, James, falls down funny. That's all the Sandler fan asks for and that is all that “Grown Ups delivers.” Success, it seems, is a highly subjective concept.

Movie Review The House Bunny

The House Bunny (2008)

Directed by Fred Wolf 

Written by Kristen Smith, Karen McCullah Lutz

Starring Anna Faris, Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, Colin Hanks 

Release Date August 22nd, 2008

Published August 21st, 2008 

Anna Faris is a terrifically funny actress. Her work in the first Scary Movie and a cameo in Lost In Translation each looked like star making performances but did not pan out. Faris did terrific work in the indie horror film May but was mostly relegated to small roles in other people's lame comedy efforts (Just Friends, My Super Ex-Girlfriend).

Now with the release of The House Bunny, Faris is getting her due as a leading lady. This vain attempt to recreate the pink hued magic of Legally Blonde is desperate and straining at times but in the end Faris rises above the lameness with a terrifically funny performance.

Shelly (Faris) has long dreamed of becoming a Playboy centerfold. After appearing in a few pictorials, including Girls of the GED, Shelly moved into the Playboy mansion and waited for Hef to make her a centerfold. On her 27th birthday, Shelly was given a huge, celeb filled party but the next morning she was out on her backside.

Kicked out of the mansion for being 27, that's like 50 something in bunny years, Shelly desperately needs a home. What luck then when she stumbles onto a college campus and discovers a misfit sorority house that desperately needs a house mother. The outcasts include Natalie (Emma Stone, Superbad), Mona (Kat Dennings, Charlie Bartlett) and Harmony (Catherine McPhee, American Idol).

The misfit girls and their shabby sorority house are about to be foreclosed on unless they can attract 30 new pledges in the next month. Shelly offers to help with makeovers for the girls and giant parties to attract attention. But, when Hef calls to give Shelly her dream centerfold, Miss November, will she leave her girls behind?

The House Bunny was directed by former SNL sketch writer Fred Wolf. In his directorial debut Wolf shows a near flawless command of the cliché. Wolf nails every well worn trope of the college outsider movie, tossing in a couple of rom-com clichés as well as Colin Hanks joins the cast as Shelly's mismatched love interest.

There is nothing new, original or slightly unfamiliar about The House Bunny. Thus, all of the film's appeal hinges on the star performance of Anna Faris. Lucky for those subjected to this tripe that Faris nearly makes the film watchable. With her stunning physicality, both comedic and otherwise, and her pitch perfect delivery of even the lamest blonde jokes, Faris manages the herculean feat of dragging laughs out from under the banalities.

The House Bunny is not insidiously bad, more innocuously bad. It's not good but not so bad that I can say I hate it. Anna Faris is such a winning presence, such a sunny personality that, for a time, I thought I could actually like the film. However, by the time we reached the obligatory speech to save the sorority house, I was off somewhere else in my mind.

Whether I was remembering an episode of The Office I had just watched or deciding whether to shop for groceries or go do laundry after the movie, I don't recall. Nor do I really recall much beyond the platitudes of The House Bunny.

Movie Review: Dickie Roberts Former Child Star

Dickie Roberts Former Child Star (2003) 

Directed by Sam Weisman

Written by Fred Wolf 

Starring David Spade, Mary McCormack, Jon Lovitz, Alyssa Milano, Rob Reiner, Craig Bierko

Release Date September 5th, 2003 

Published September 4th, 2003 

Roger Ebert has a terrific line in his review of Dickie Roberts: Child Star. A line that sums up David Spade's career better than anything I have ever heard. Roger believes that David Spade could successfully play the lead in a story that hates his character. That perfectly describes the problems with both Dickie Roberts and Spade's previous film Joe Dirt. It's obvious from watching both films that neither character was built to be likable or sweet. Yet, because Hollywood believes all lead characters must be wholly likable, these films were forced to shoehorn in character traits that Spade cannot play. Things like being likable or charismatic or attractive. 

In the 1970's, Dickie Roberts was the star of one of TV's biggest hits "The Glimmer Gang". Then when he turned 9 years old the show was canceled and Dickie's mother left him. From the age of 9, Dickie's oddball behavior and pigeonholed rep as a child star prevented him from getting an acting gig and eventually he took a job parking cars at a Hollywood restaurant.

Dickie remains grounded somewhat by his group of former child star friends including Greg Brady, Danny Partridge, Leif Garrett and Screech. The group gets together once a week to bemoan their career lows and play poker. Also helping Dickie is his agent Sidney (Jon Lovitz). Are all Hollywood agents in movies named Sidney?

After an embarrassing loss on Celebrity Boxing and a break up with his bitch girlfriend Cyndi (Alyssa Milano), Dickie hears of a movie part that he would be perfect for. It's a role in a new film directed by Rob Reiner. Unfortunately for Dickie, Rob Reiner doesn't think Dickie could play the role because Dickie never had a real childhood. This launches us into the thrust of the film; Dickie hires a family to treat him to the childhood he never had.

Given our culture’s odd fascination with the travails of former child stars, Dickie Roberts starts with a good satirical premise. Unfortunately, Spade and his co-writer Fred Wolf abandon much of the satire in favor of the treacle family stuff. The family dynamic of Dickie relearning how to be a child to become a better adult is the driving force of the plot but it's not nearly as interesting or funny as the one scene of Dickie and his child star buddies playing poker. There are a number of funny lines sprinkled throughout the poker scene such as Barry Williams using Brady memorabilia in place of cash or Dustin "Screech" Diamond's mortification over the perks he never got.

Forcing Spade and his smarmy, snarky persona into the family scenes and a terrifically misguided romantic subplot with the mother played by Mary McCormick slams the film to a halt. Credit Spade for wringing a few laughs out of these scenes but not nearly enough. Only one scene in the family section of the film shows Spade and Wolf's best comic instincts. It's a scene where the family's young daughter tries out for her schools pep squad. A more popular girl tries out first and performs a stunningly sexual dance and the judges are rightly horrified. In most films that performance would be praised but here it gets the treatment that a nine-year-old acting like a stripper deserves, utter shock and disdain.

It's unquestionable that both Spade and Wolf have strong comic instincts. The problem is they are too often reigned in by conventional film writing that states that lead characters must be likable from beginning to end. Neither Dickie Roberts or Joe Dirt are likable characters, they are buffoons and the movies that surround them struggle to treat them that way but are undermined by the conventional need to make the characters sympathetic. Spade just doesn't do sympathetic.

Given the opportunity, Spade might make a very funny movie. In fact I am one of the few who liked his first solo starring effort Lost and Found where he seemed less shackled to the conventionally likable character. That film’s massive box office failure may be some of the reason why his other films have fit easier into that Hollywood likability box and have been comic failures whereas Lost and Found was merely a money failure.