Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Grown Ups’ On Netflix, Where Adam Sandler Gets His Funny Gang Together For A Middle School Reunion

Long before Adam Sandler inked a Netflix deal and gave us gifts like Murder Mystery and Hubie Halloween, he was making blockbuster comedies with the usual suspects (Rob Schneider, David Spade, and Kevin James, to name a few). They may not be critical darlings, but these Happy Madison flicks have raked in the big bucks time and time again. Among them is Grown Ups, a comedy featuring much of Sandler’s crew – and it’s now streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime for all you Sandler fans and casual viewers alike.

GROWN UPS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: In 1978, five kids bring their middle school basketball team to victory with the help of their beloved old coach, “Buzzer” Fernando (Blake Clark). Decades later, after Buzzer passes away, the group reunites to pay tribute to him at the lakeside cabin where they once celebrated their victory as children. The five buddies are Lenny (Adam Sandler), a Hollywood talent agent, Eric (Kevin James), who claims to co-own a lawn furniture company, Kurt (Chris Rock), a stay-at-home dad, Marcus (David Spade), the lone wolf (and womanizer) of the group, and Rob (Rob Schneider), who is something of a hippie and gets ragged on for his much-older third wife. The group also bring along their wives, children, and Kurt’s mother-in-law, which only adds to the chaos of the trip.

Intent on reigniting old friendships and reliving their glory days, the men soon discover that they perhaps aren’t as grown up as they seem to be, and the immature shenanigans enter full swing. Can this disillusioned group rediscover the value of friendship and family and start to process what it really means to get older and leave the past in the rearview mirror? Perhaps this lakeside adventure and some pratfalls, goofy gags, and heartwarming moments will help reveal what’s really important in life.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Grown Ups will likely bring to mind other Happy Madison titles, but it may also evoke friend group shenanigan movies like Tag, Hot Tub Time Machine, and Without a Paddle, and yes, the film’s sequel, Grown Ups 2.

Performance Worth Watching: Gotta hand this one to the late, great Norm Macdonald, who plays odd-man-out fisherman Geezer. While many of his funniest scenes were cut from the film, he still manages to steal the show every time he appears, convinced he’s the best friend of Sandler’s character Lenny. Macdonald’s cameos in Sandler’s flicks over the years were often a bright light in otherwise lackluster stories, and his performance in Grown Ups is no exception.

Memorable Dialogue: So many of the jokes in Grown Ups are cheap, gross, or have aged extremely poorly, but the kids believing that getting “wasted” means you have a hankering for ice cream and saying “I want to get wasted every day of my life,” and “I want to get chocolate wasted!” remains one of the film’s more memorable scenes.

Sex and Skin: There are some sex jokes, breastfeeding gags, and a glimpse of a bare butt, but not much sexy stuff here.

Our Take: Now over a decade old, Grown Ups perhaps plays even more poorly than it did when it was released. Armed with tired fat jokes, mildly homophobic bits, and some genuinely revolting physical gags involving cake, dog poop, and breastmilk, it’s certainly not Sandler and his team at their best. This is true of many a Happy Madison production, and it’s not the worst by a long shot (remember Jack & Jill and You Don’t Mess With the Zohan? Woof.), but with a cast as stacked as Grown Ups‘ is, one hopes that the material might live up to the caliber of many of the film’s performers. This is not the case, even if there are a few moments that verge on funny or heartwarming.

Grown Ups, for all the shit it (rightfully) gets for many of its cheap jokes and crude gags, has a giant heart. The stakes are incredibly low – much of the flick is just dudes hanging out – and there’s obviously a lot of love present between these men. It’s also very watchable, even with all its cringe-inducing, juvenile humor. The script obviously wants to say something about realizing the importance of family and what it means to grow older, but the emotional nuance present in flicks like Judd Apatow’s, which often tackle these themes, never makes an appearance in Grown Ups. All that said, however, the box office – and the Maseratis Sandler gifted to each of his costars after the film’s incredible performance – speaks for itself. The heart wants what the heart wants, even when it’s incredibly stupid.

Our Call: SKIP IT. While Grown Ups may be enjoyable for those willing to turn their brains off and forget what year we live in, it can’t hold a candle to many of Sandler’s other flicks.

Jade Budowski is a freelance writer with a knack for ruining punchlines, hogging the mic at karaoke, and thirst-tweeting. Follow her on Twitter: @jadebudowski.

Stream Grown Ups on Netflix