Grown Ups (2010) - Sandler & Co. look turgid in film with solely commercial appeal

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Five middle-aged male comedians in a water slide screaming make up this poster for Dennis Dugan's Grown Ups

Five childhood friends meet again as adults, when their high school basketball coach 'the Buzzer' passes away, and they decide to have a weekend vacation around the 4th of July.

 

Grown Ups is written by co-writer/co-producer/co-star Adam Sandler (Reign over Me (2007)) and Fred Wolf (Joe Dirt (2001)) and directed by Dennis Dugan (Problem Child (1990)).

In spite of the prominent funny-men (minus David Spade (Entourage (2015))) and comedienne Maya Rudolph (Sisters (2015)), Grown Ups is surprisingly unfunny. Bad jokes are mixed with vulgar or simplistic slapstick. Everyone: Maria Bello (Abduction (2011)), Salma Hayek (Traffic (2000)), Tim Meadows (Aliens in the Attic (2009)) and Steve Buscemi (Rampart (2011)) included, - look a little bit dumber for appearing in this immature, - immature in the bad way, - strained low-brow burp.

Grown Ups is a dopey product, and it seems a blatantly cynical (or is it merely dumb?) paycheck job. The characters laugh more than plenty in Grown Ups, but as audiences there's not much to grin at concerning these non-characters' outing.

 

Related post:

 

Dennis Dugan: I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007) - James and Sandler marry in Dugan's crude, wrongfully maligned buddy-comedy

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 80 mil. $

Box office: 271.4 mil. $

= Big hit (returned 3.39 times its cost)

[Grown Ups premiered 24 June (Australia, Iceland) and runs 102 minutes. Sandler earned 25 mil. $ from the film. Shooting took place in Los Angeles and Massachusetts, including Boston, from May - August 2009. The film opened #2, behind holdover hit Toy Story 3, to a 40.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#4-#4) and grossed 162 mil. $ (59.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Germany with 18.2 mil. $ (6.7 %) and the UK with 12.1 mil. $ (4.5 %). Sandler bought his four male co-stars new Maserati sports cars to celebrate the film's success. Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. Dugan returned to direct almost the entire cast for sequel Grown Ups 2 (2013), also a hit. Dugan returned first with Just Go With It (2011). Sandler also returned in Just Go With It (2011); Kevin James (Pixels (2015)) in The Dilemma (2011); and Chris Rock (Panther (1995)) in Two Days in New York (2012). Grown Ups is rotten at 11 % with a 3.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Grown Ups? 

Bridesmaids (2011) - Subversive comedy with laughs a-plenty

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2 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Screenplay: Annie Mumolo, Kristen Wiig  (lost to Rory Stewart Kinnear, Lynne Ramsay for We Need to Talk About Kevin)
Best Actress: Kristen Wiig (lost to Bérénice Bejo for The Artist)

+ Best Comedy of the Year

The attention-grabbing poster for Paul Feig's Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids is a successful film about women that curse and can't figure stuff out, who shit and vomit and are volatile and confused and not just pretty and feminine.

More concretely, it is about a woman, who is getting married: And about her old, failed best friend Annie, who is getting sidetracked as her maid-of-honor for a new, more successful and beautiful society friend.

The method for the not few laughs that Bridesmaids delivers is exaggeration more than anything else. The characters and situations are larger-than-life, and so becomes the resulting hilarity.

Kristen Wiig in my favorite scene in the film, the drunk-on-an-airplane-scene

 

Kristin Wiig (Girl Most Likely (2012)), who co-wrote the film with Annie Mumolo (This Is 40 (2012), actress), - they were Oscar-nominated for their script, - does a great job with Maya Rudolph (Away We Go (2009)) and Melissa McCarthy (Mike & Molly (2010-14)), - in her breakthrough role that also earned her an Oscar-nomination, - as the other two especially funny women in this refreshing, romantic comedy.
Rarely do we get a big comedy led by such funny women, and Bridesmaids is all the more ballsy (excuse the bad pun) because of its subversive, outrageous dialogs (like the subtle power play in the Brazilian restaurant scene) and its gross-out elements (like the following, notorious dress fitting scene.) Bridesmaids tops many 'male' comedies in wit, brazenness and vulgarity. - Kudos!
Paul Feig (Nurse Jackie (2009-10)) directed the hilarities and is continuing his focus on female-driven comedy: After his buddy cop comedy hit last year, The Heat, Feig is working on another McCarthy-headed actioner, Spy (2015), and then on a Reese Witherspoon-headed comedy entitled Wish List.

Related posts:

Paul Feig: The Heat (2013) or, Prissy and Offensive in Boston

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess

The female stars of Paul Feig's Bridesmaids. - You gotta love it

Click here to watch the hilarious trailer for this fun-fest comedy

Budget: 32.5 mil. $
Box office: 288.3 mil. $
= Huge hit and producer Judd Apatow's biggest commercial hit to date

What do you think of Bridesmaids and some of the other recent movies with Wiig and McCarthy?
Looking forward to Feig's coming comedies?

Away We Go (2009) or, Where Do We Start This Family?

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Still-based, hand-drawn poster graphics like this on the poster for Sam Mendes' Away We Go clearly denote tongue-in-cheek indie wittiness

A young couple are going to be parents, but when his parents move to Belgium, they no longer have a reason to stay where they are, and so they head out on a cross-country-trip to find the ideal place to start their family.

A natural funny/happy opposite to English master director Sam Mendes' (Jarhead (2005)) tense period drama masterpiece preceding it, Revolutionary Road (2008), Away We Go is a road movie and a love comedy that won me over little by little. It was mostly due to the charming lead actors, John Krasinski (Aloha (2015)) and Maya Rudolph (Forever (2018, Tv-series)), and fine supporting actors like Allison Janney (The Big C (2012, TV-series)), Jeff Daniels (Allegiant (2016)), Jim Gaffigan (The Love Guru (2008)), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Monster House (2006)) and others in parts that are, however, quite caricatured, indicating to us and our protagonist couple the various different pitfalls that other couples fall in over time.
Away We Go is written very sweetly and with some laughs by husband-and-wife writer-team Dave Eggers (The Circle (2017)) and Vendela Vida. Mendes doesn't distinguish himself much as a director here, but of course does successfully check off another genre on his list.
The music is a tiring acoustic, indie, singer/songwriter hotchpotch mostly by Scottish musician Alexi Murdoch (Fire Horse (2013, short)).

Related posts:

Sam Mendes: Spectre (2015) - Mendes' second Bond delivers
Skyfall (2012) - Overly celebrated third pout from Daniel Craig as Bond in slick production
American Beauty (1999) or, Escape by Death

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 17 mil. $
Box office: 14.8 mil. $
= Huge flop (returned 0.87 times the cost)
[Away We Go was released 5 June (USA, limited) and runs 98 minutes. Shooting took place in Florida, Arizona, including Phoenix, Colorado and Connecticut. The film opened #26 to a 130k $ first weekend in 4 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #12 and in 506 theaters, grossing 9.4 mil. $ (63.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 1.9 mil. $ (12.8 %) and Italy with 1.3 mil. $ (8.8 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, translating to a notch better than this one. Mendes returned with Skyfall (2012). Krasinski returned in It's Complicated (2009), Rudolph in Saturday Night Live: Weekend Update Summer Edition (2009, TV-series), Presidential Reunion (2010, short) and theatrically in MacGruber (2010). Away We Go is fresh at 67 % with a 6.6/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Away We Go?