What Do The Critics Say?
"Sometimes even a high profile movie can surprise you. Take Grown Ups, for example. Lo and behold, Grown Ups turns out to be the funniest thing in which Sandler has appeared in years. It’s also the most humorous motion picture directed by his frequent collaborator, Dennis Dugan, in at least a decade (and perhaps ever). Grown Ups never dwells much on the serious material, instead moving quickly to the next comedy skit."
SHUTTER VOICE
"Mostly this is a comedy about five ordinary wisenheimers just hanging out, trying to top each other with insults and catch a break from the families they (mostly) love. Diverting enough to get by, Grown Ups is Adam Sandler growing up: but not too much."
Owen Gleiberman ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
"It's a goofy summer movie, quickly forgotten but fun enough while it lasts. A throw-back Sandler-ish comedy (meaning childish but with heart and an 'important lesson' somewhere in the mix)."
Rebecca Murray ABOUT.COM
"Affectionate" is the perfect word for "Grown Ups." Most of these guys have worked together before, and they clearly enjoy each other's company. The movie is loosely structured enough to showcase all of their talents. As a result, watching them laze around a swank lakeside cabin is about as relaxing and easy as hanging out at your own lakeside cabin."
Chris Hewitt ST PAUL PIONEER EXPRESS
"It's a crude and decent-hearted outing and, yes, the adolescent still wins out. Like many a comedy banking on the known charms of its cast, "Grown Ups" is easy, breezy, predictable. Little sticks once the credits roll. But it does have a goodly share of silly giggles and moronic laughs. The good news: Not all of them were in the preview trailer."
Lisa Kennedy DENVER POST
"Strangely enough, it's actually not bad. While it's nothing groundbreaking and there's generally not a ton of plot or growth or anything of that nature, Grown Ups is fairly funny thanks to the chemistry of the leads. Grown Ups doesn't break any new ground, but it is funny. It's not a laugh riot, but there's more than enough chuckles and snorts to carry the movie."
Ron Hogan DENOFGEEK
"Adam Sandler and four other showboats desperately needing a hit had me laughing at Grown Ups more than expected. Grown Ups stars a Mount Rushmore of mocking comedy. What kept me laughing is the genuine camaraderie among Sandler's posse, the way they almost play themselves that perfectly suits this slim material."
Steve Persall ST PETERSBURG TIMES
"At its best, the film is just a bunch of guys who just enjoy each other's company, nothing more, nothing less."
Jeffrey Lyles GAZETTE
"Adam Sandler presents a sweetly endearing movie about relationships. The topper is some scenes are really funny!"
JACKIE K COOPER
"Sandler comedies are about gags not visual flash and Grown Ups unloads running jokes involving a mother-in-law who farts constantly, a mother who breastfeeds her 4 year old son and parents peeing in public pools. There's abundant lunacy to keep slapstick fans laughing even with a subdued Sandler front and centre."
Steve Ramos BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE
"It’s inspiring to see Adam Sandler bounce back from last year’s Judd Apatow catastrophe Funny People with the cheerful and surprisingly heartfelt Grown Ups. Helps that the women are not played by comediennes but actresses with emotional affect. Grown Ups is nicely subtle about mid-life regret and lifelong promise."
Armond White NEW YORK PRESS
The Inside Story
It was Adam seven time Blimp Award winner Sandler who came up with the idea of a guy who feels like he and his family have lost their perspective of what’s important in life. So, when he unexpectedly has to go back to his home town, he decides to use it as an opportunity to get back to his roots and get his family on the right track. To do this, he rents a lake house and invites his old friends and their families to come and stay with them for the Fourth of July weekend. "The whole project was really appealing," says director Dennis Dugan. "These real-life friends get together for a summer to make a movie about friends who get together for a summer at a lake house. It’s a bittersweet reunion, because their coach has died, but they’re also happy to see each other. They're meeting each other’s families: it’s them and their wives and girlfriends and kids and dogs; at a moment when they’re all transitioning in their lives." The underlying sweetness to the story proved to be the key in bringing the all-star talent together. "It’s a really, really good script that Adam wrote with Fred Wolf," says Rob Schneider. "It's very funny and it has interesting characters. Dennis really encouraged us to make it real; get out there, play around with it, and make it a natural performance." As Maya Rudolph puts it: "There are a lot of funny people in this movie, but it’s not just a lot of funny people in this movie. It’s a movie about old friends played by people who really are old friends. You can see that history come out in the relationships." Once Sandler and Fred Wolf finished the script, it wasn’t hard to get everyone on board. "Adam’s whole idea was that everyone would bring their families and we’d all have a nice summer at the lake house," Dugan remembers. "It was one of the best summers of my life. Because everyone knew everyone else so well, it was like going to a really great party. Adam really wanted that kind of atmosphere to come across in the movie." "Adam created something special for all of us," notes 2003 Golden Camera Award winner Salma Hayek ("Frida"). "All of our children are about the same age, and mostly girls, and they all bonded immediately. It was really a family environment: it was perfect." "We wanted the whole movie to have a nostalgic feel and element to it," says the production designer, Perry Andelin Blake ("Big Stan"). "Everything harks back to a simpler time. The movie really is about getting back to family, roots, and being together with people." So the real-life chemistry between the actors would translate seamlessly to the characters they play on screen. In fact, many of the stars of "Grown Ups" have known each other for years."Most of the guys met at "Saturday Night Live". I met Adam doing stand-up twenty years ago easily at Comic Strip in New York. We just hit it off when we were the younger funnier guys in the club. Spade I met at SNL. Schneider I met at SNL." "When the SNL stories came out, I'd just see Kevin sort of fading away," Schneider says. "Honestly, though, it seemed like Kevin is cut from the same cloth. Having done stand-up comedy and surviving, he gets it." "If you hang around comics or comic actors a lot, you sometimes see really competitive guys: 'oh, he just told a joke and now I’ve got to tell a better joke'. But this set was really relaxed; partly, I think," says Dugan, "because Adam brought everybody together." Their attitude was: "Let’s just start riffing and see how much fun we can have." In the movie, the five characters are supposed to have enough natural basketball talent that as children they could win a local championship. However, the guys agree: only Sandler and James have game, with Spade and Schneider a step back, and Rock bringing up the rear.
Four time EMMY winner Chris Rock admits he's "not an athlete. Can I play? No. I couldn’t play when I was young, but at least then, I played a lot, so I found ways to contribute. Now that I'm older, I really suck. It’s just horrible." Colin Quinn, who appeared in ninety eight episodes of "Saturday Night Live" notes: "Sandler and I are the best. I say that like it's close. It’s not; the rest of them suck. There’s no other way to describe it. This is the problem, or maybe the good thing, about comedians; they all have the confidence. They'll shoot fifty air balls in a row, and then they’ll mock you if you miss a shot. But that’s all right: it’s how it is." To train for the big basketball rematch that closes the film, the filmmakers brought in former NBA player Jerome 'Pooh' Richardson (nicknamed by his grandmother, who thought he resembled Winnie the Pooh) to work with the guys on their basketball skills. "I thought, 'OK, we aren't supposed to be that good,' so I thought we were just going to run and goof around with Pooh," says Spade (who played Dennis Finch in one hundred and fourty nine episodes of "Just Shoot Me"). "But he got there and he had us run plays. We ran a zip 45, bounce pass, switch around, underneath, reverse layup. It was fun. We learned about eighteen plays. We never got any better, but we looked really cool." The job of balancing all of the talent and realizing the vision for the film fell to director and actor Dennis Dugan, a veteran Happy Madison collaborator who said: "I've lost count of how many movies I've made with Adam. I’ve done four movies with Rob Schneider, three with David Spade, three with Chris Rock, and this is my second with Kevin James." It’s not an easy thing to be the man in charge of a film with eighteen principal actors. Here's one example Dugan recalls. "The logistics of the funeral scene. Each of the five leads has to have his hero shot. Each of the characters is meeting each of the other characters. There are about six hundred extras. You have to keep everybody’s spirit up for six days while you’re doing the same scene over and over again so you can get all the coverage and close-ups you need. And since this scene is at the beginning of the movie, when the audience is getting to know these characters that we're going to follow, you have to go into the editing room and figure out how to make it shorter and funnier and livelier. It was crazy." Sandler plays Lenny Feder, who was once the ringleader of sorts among the kids: the one who could convince the others to do the silly things kids do. He’s since grown up to be a wheeling, dealing Hollywood agent. Was Sandler worried before starting production that there would be any unhealthy one-upmanship amongst the stars? "No, no. I think we might have been competitive in our 20s, but that’s the beauty of doing a movie together in our fourties." Sandler and Dugan have worked together six times and enjoy their collaboration. Dugan admits, "It's very fun and very challenging. I always thought I was the hardest worker on earth until I met Adam and then I realized that I was at best second. Like this one. Adam thought up the movie, co-wrote the movie, stars in the movie, and produces the movie, so he’s pretty involved. He's very challenging; he always wants your work to be fresh, new, and creative." Kevin James, who plays Eric Lamonsoff, may be the only one of the main five guys who was not an alum of SNL, but he fit right in. "This was the best time working I’ve ever had. It was natural. We are all good friends so that translates to the film. Every day, I was laughing and just having the best time." James decscribes his character as "a nice guy who just wants to pretend he’s a little bit better than he is."
Chris Rock plays Kurt McKenzie. "He’s a househusband. He stays home with the kids." Rock says that off-screen, the comic actors behave very similarly to their on-screen counterparts. "Any time we’re not shooting, we’re just saying horrible things about each other." Spade ("8 Simple Rules") plays Marcus Higgins."He is a little bit of a skirt chaser and he’s a flirt with girls. Because all the other characters are married, he likes to mix it up with the group." Spade points out that though Sandler has been a collaborator for years, this is the first time they’ve co-starred in a movie. "I thought it was just something that wasn’t in the cards; but it was really nice when he said he wanted me for this one." Schneider thinks his character Rob Hilliard is a normal guy, but admits his character "is obsessed with certain things to avoid emotional issues in his life. He gives advice but doesn’t apply it to his own life." The filmmakers found a trio of extremely talented women to play the characters’ better halves. "Salma, Maria, and Maya are all really excellent actresses and comediennes," says Dugan. "When the girls have their scenes together, it’s a very different kind of comedy than what's going on with the guys. A movie needs that kind of change of pace, and these women, all incredible talents, gave us that." 1998 Golden Eagle Award winner Hayek, plays Lenny’s wife Roxanne, a glamorous fashion designer who’s in for a bit of a culture shock when Lenny brings his family to the lake house. "They're supposed to be on their way to see her fashion show in Milan. It’s a culture shock. She’s definitely a fish out of water." 2004 Golden Satellite Award winner Bello ("The Cooler") who plays Sally, went so far as to invent an entire backstory for her character. "I think Sally was probably a cheerleader back then. Eric was probably the captain of the football team. We have two kids and I'm the ultimate mother. They’re the two from town who stayed in town." Of her onscreen husband she says: "Kevin is the loveliest, yummiest, most beautiful man. I just fell in love with him from the moment we met. He reminds me of my brother, Joey, from Philly." Rudolph, who shot to fame on SNL, plays Deanne, the wife of Chris Rock’s character. "She's the breadwinner of the family, so it sort of leaves Chris's character to take care of the household, which includes their two children as well as Deanne’s mother. That provides a little bit of a tension in the household." Rudolph, who has appeared in one hundred and fourty seven episodes of SNL notes: "It’s been a lot of fun watching Chris play this part. It’s really different from anything I’ve seen him do before. He really made me laugh and forget I was really pregnant." Rudolph gave birth to her second daughter Lucille on November 6th 2009 in Los Angeles. her first child, Pearl Minnie, was born on October 15th 2005. In the film, the five friends return to their home town, where they find that some of their former schoolmates haven’t moved on. As with the other key roles in the film, these characters are played by actors who fit in well with the Happy Madison regulars and includes: Colin Quinn, another SNL veteran who plays Dickie Bailey, the hometown boys ringleader and, Tim Meadows who plays Malcolm, another of the former opponents. 1993 & 2002 Independent Spirit Award winner Steve Buscemi was cast as the hapless Wiley. A twenty five acre chunk of land in Essex, Massachusetts provided the setting for "Grown Ups". "We got lucky with the town of Essex," says Dugan. "The town owns a peninsula on Lake Chebacco. We rented it from them and basically made it into a back lot." They cleaned up the lakefront, built a dock, a boathouse and trucked in sand to make a little beach.
What's It All About?
 This is the story of five childhood friends who reunite thirty years later to meet each other's families for the first time, at the funeral of their beloved former basketball coach, Bobby Ferdinando, dies. Lenny, Kurt, Eric and Rob all have now have children of varying ages, while Marcus, who considers himself a ladies man, remains single. Now thanks to well to do Lenny, on the Fourth of July weekend, for the first time in over thirty years, they will all return to the Amoskeag Lake house where they celebrated their championship way back in 1978 were best friends when they were all just kids. It will be a period of bonding, revelations and surprises, starting with Lenny. He's failed to tell his friends that he, his wife Roxanne and the kids (Greg and Keithie) are leaving next morning for a trip to Europe. As they and their partners will soon discover: growing older doesn’t always mean growing up.
The Verdict
"It may not have appealed to the 'politically correct' critics in the states but fans of Saturday Night Live and Adam Sandler, will find plenty to enjoy and lots to laugh about, in "Grown Ups". Now the title is a little bit deceptive, because, as audiences will soon discover, these five guys have a lot of growing up to do. It's all good-natured fun as the former childhood friends reunite for a Fourth Of July weekend at the very same Lakehouse, they celebrated their Basketball Championship win at. Being a Happy Madison Production, you know there are boundaries that will be broken: and break them they do. Make no mistake, when Rob Schneider ("Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo") and Sandler ("You Don't Mess with the Zohan") get together, something outrageously different and for some cinemagoers, confronting, will be unleashed. "Grown Ups" isn't all about madcap humour and sending up society: it's all about family. As many in audience will eventually discover, the moral in this comedy is: there's more to life than bigscreen TV's, mobile phones and Playstation 3'S. An entertaining romp with plenty of laughs. 3 1/2 STARS."
The Production Team
Director
Writers
Producers
Original Music
Cinematography
Film Editor
Casting
Production Design
Art Direction
Set Decoration
Costume Design
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Dennis Dugan
Adam Sandler & Fred Wolf
Jack Giarraputo & Adam Sandler
Rupert Gregson-Williams
Theo van de Sande
Tom Costain
Roger Mussenden & Jeremy Rich
Perry Andelin Blake
Alan Au
Claire Kaufman
Ellen Lutter
Who Is Playing Who?
Adam Sandler
Kevin James
Chris Rock
David Spade
Rob Schneider
Salma Hayek
Maria Bello
Maya Rudolph
Joyce Van Patten
Ebony Jo-Ann
Di Quon
Steve Buscemi
Colin Quinn
Tim Meadows
Madison Riley
Jamie Chung
Ashley Loren
Jake Goldberg
Cameron Boyce
Alexys Sanchez
Ada-nicole Sanger
Frank Gingerich
Morgan Gingerich
Nadji Jeter
China Anne McClain
Blake Clark
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Lenny Feder
Eric
Kurt
Marcus
Rob
Roxanne Chase-Feder
Sally Lamonsoff
Deanne McKenzie
Gloria
Mama Ronzoni
Rita
Wiley
Dickie Bailey
Malcolm
Jasmine Hilliard
Amber Hilliard
Bridget Hilliard
Greg Feder
Keithie Feder
Becky Feder
Donna Lamonsoff
Bean Lamonsoff
Bean Lamonsoff
Andre McKenzie
Charlotte McKenzie
Bobby Ferdinando
Run Time 102 minutes
Rated PG [AUST]
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