MOVIE OF THE WEEK #1 (7/12/13): GROWN UPS 2

"Really - They pay you THAT much in residuals for 'The King of Queens?!'"Eric Lamonsoff (Kevin James) talks with his friends Marcus Higgins (David Spade), Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock) and Lenny Feder (Adam Sandler) while their former rival/Kmart employee Robideaux (Jonathan Loughran) looks on from behind in a scene from director Dennis Dugan's GROWN UPS 2. Credit: Tracy Bennett © 2013 CMTG. All Rights Reserved.

KEY CAST MEMBERS: Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James, David Spade, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, Taylor Lautner, Maya Rudolph, Shaquille O'Neal, Peter Dante, Tim Meadows, Colin Quinn, Alexander Ludwig, Alexys Nycole Sanchez, Cameron Boyce, Kris Murrell ... And a ton of their current/former Saturday Night Live friends 

WRITER(S): Fred Wolf, Adam Sandler and Tim Herlihy

DIRECTOR: Dennis Dugan

WEB SITE: http://www.grownups2-movie.com/

60 SECOND PLOT SYNOPSIS: Hollywood screenwriter Lenny Feder (Adam Sandler), his wife Roxanne (Salma Hayek) and their kids (Alexys Nycole Sanchez, Cameron Boyce and Jake Goldberg, respectively, in order of age) have moved back to Lenny's hometown. Reconnecting with his friends Eric Lamonsoff (Kevin James), with his friends Marcus Higgins (David Spade) and Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock),  Lenny is enjoying life back home ... Until he and his boys run afoul of a local fraternity led by Andy (Taylor Lautner) ...

Further complicating matters, Eric's wife Sally (Maria Bello) doesn't know where he's been spending much of his time during the day, Kurt's wife Deanna (Maya Rudolph) has forgotten today is their 20th wedding anniversary and Roxanne wants to have another baby. Thrown in some kid issues for three of the four and you've got the makings of a hot mess of a life ...

... And a film.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS FILM THE MOST: People who liked Grown Ups, the original.

WHO WON'T LIKE THIS FILM: Just about anyone else. 

BOTTOM LINE – IS IT GOOD, GREAT, BAD OR DOWNRIGHT AWFUL? Downright awful.

WHAT'S GOOD (OR BAD) ABOUT IT?: SPOILER ALERT: Grown Ups 2 ends with a fart joke ... And not just a fart joke, but a final call back to a recurring-throughout-the-movie fart joke.

Now, for anyone who saw it – even those who enjoyed it and helped propel it to a $160 million (in the U.S. alone, nonetheless) box office – would admit that the original Grow Ups was not a comedic masterpiece. But at least it had two things that are nearly absent from Grown Ups 2: [1] A plot and [2] a sense of humility. In their place, however, is [1] an over-abundance of cameos from famous people/Saturday Night Live cast members past and present; [2] a TON of (possibly homophobic) jokes revolving around the male anatomy (front and back); [3] the aforementioned reliance of farts, burps and vomit to induce (pun intended) laughter and [4] a general sense of Three Stooges-esque physical humor to attempt to make up for it.

It all fails. And fails miserably at that.

Grown Ups 2 could have had a plot; the weak "we're getting old" storyline is well, weak at best. Taylor Lautner is comical, Rock is comical (in the few scenes he gets to speak) and occasionally David Spade throws out a decent one liner. The best work, however, is turned in by young actors playing all the kids of the film's adult stars. Take them out of the movie and you are left with an absolute disgrace of a motion picture – then again, considering Grown Ups 2 already is a disgrace with its mishmash of jokes, over-the-top stupidity and ridiculousness that is either tired, unfunny or both. (Here's an image for you: Steve Buscemi dressed like Flavor Flav. Sleep at night with that in your head.) At least the movie gave professional bodybuilder Kris Murrell a chance to act in a movie – even if every joke is at her very buff expense – right?

A film where ridiculous is the norm and sanity is sorely lacking, Grown Ups 2 is like a long Saturday Night Live sketch that should never have made it to air, let alone a theater near you.

RATING (OUT OF FOUR BUCKETS OF POPCORN):