Meanwhile, Eric has started secretly spending much of his free time with his doting mother (Georgia Engel) to get the attention he feels wife Sally (Maria Bello) isn't paying him at home. For Kurt, now working as a cable installer, he enjoys milking the fact that wife Deanne (Maya Rudolph) forgot their twentieth anniversary. There are plenty of subplots, but they drift in and out with a comfortable, unforced lack of urgency. Once more directed by Dennis Dugan (2011's " Just Go with It") and written by Fred Wolf (2008's " Strange Wilderness"), Tim Herlihy (2008's " You Don't Mess with the Zohan"), and Adam Sandler (2011's " Jack and Jill"), "Grown Ups 2" stays true to the first film by not overstuffing itself with a major central storyline, instead letting the amiable cast do their thing while clearly having a blast shooting it. Putting a slight damper on things is Lenny's wife Roxanne (Salma Hayek), who has begun to bring up the idea of expanding their family to six when Lenny is perfectly content with the three kids they already have. It's the last day of school before summer break, and as their kids look excitedly toward the next few months of freedom before them, the guys plan a big '80s party blowout at Lenny's to kick the season off right. Since last they were seen, forty-something best friends Lenny Feder (Adam Sandler), Eric Lamonsoff (Kevin James), Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock), and Marcus Higgins (David Spade) have reconnected in a big way, moving their families (or, in terminal bachelor Marcus' case, himself) back to their Massachusetts hometown to get closer to their roots. It's impossible to take any of it seriously, but it should work like gangbusters at teenage summertime slumber parties the world over. Not a whole lot of it is funny, but some of it is, and what isn't tends to still be in relatively good spirits. Like a reunion with old friends who frequently get urinated on by wild bucks (don't ask) and delight in "burpsnarting" (no, seriously, don't ask), the film marries slice-of-life comedy with as much slapstick and bodily function humor as one can squeeze into an hour and a half. If you took to the predecessor, you'll find this one a fitting continuation. If you hated the last one, you'll be in misery all over again. Marking the first sequel Sandler's ever made, believe it or not, "Grown Ups 2" is almost aggressively more of the same. Revisiting "Grown Ups" on Blu-ray three years later only confirmed my original assessment: it's really not that bad of a movie and has almost certainly received a bum rap. A laid-back, intermittently sweet story of old childhood friends reuniting with each other and their families after they're all brought back to their hometown for the funeral of their basketball coach, the picture's breezy tone, likable ensemble, and preference for nostalgia-tinged observations in lieu of needless overplotting gave it an unexpectedly genial undercurrent. Yes, the film was overloaded withand harmed bybathroom humor, juvenile behavior, and obvious pratfalls, but what most of its naysayers seemed to overlook was what happened in between the obvious low-rent stuff. " Grown Ups" fast became one of the biggest hits of Adam Sandler's career when it was released in June 2010, but that success only seemed to fuel the fire of its ruthless critical disdain.
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