Grownups

I was in the shower, wondering why my soap budget had escalated threefold over the past month, when I realized I had begun purchasing "Irish Spring" in the interim to offset costs during this HORRIBLE RECESSION.

As I applied the lathery bar to my supple form, one truth kept flowing down the drain. The makers of "Irish Spring" had not only put in the generally accepted obsolescence of a soap's deterioration, but infused a near chemical reaction with human derma that made my full cake at the beginning of the shower reduce itself to a unusable sliver by washing's end.

At first I wrote it off to my ritual of Tantric masturbation - which can consume, believe you me, an enormous amount of lather, hours and self-respect. Then I concluded that Colgate/Palm-Olive was deliberately fucking with me and my laving dollar, just to make a buck. Just like American car companies did once we dethroned Hitler and Hirohito.

The grand rip off.

Essentially, that grift remains. Companies selling horseshit, because their wares were once considered sound and appealed to millions of consumers. They rode the wave, gradually producing more inferior crap for buyers who were either idiots, dupes, slap-happy fools or willfully ignorant compatriots in the grand national scam.

Soap, cars, politics, economic theories or comedy is no different. There's always a batch of jerk-off salesmen to pitch the latest atrocity as fresh and new.

Which brings us to Grownups.

It's the new Adam Sandler movie! Floopa-de-doo-doo.

Even after years of therapy, I can only vaguely recall the beatings, sodomy, scaldings and emotional abuses I suffered as a child at the Catholic orphanage, but, so help me Zeezus, if they played this movie in the shivering cold nave of the church which acted, often, as the womb of my emotional and physical agony, I would have begged for deliverance to hell instead of its screening.

And speaking of that eternal underworld reserved for the most hideous and foul players here on earth, how's this for the candidacy of director Dennis Dugan (friend & directorial fellator of Mr. Sandler)?:

Problem Child

Brain Donors

Beverly Hills Ninja

Love Boat: The Next Wave

Big Daddy

National Security

Shasta McNasty

The Benchwarmers

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry

You Don't Mess with the Zohan.

That filmography reads like the docket at Nuremburg.

You just don't get to live amongst civilized people any longer when your rap sheet is that long. You should have to don sackcloth and ashes and walk the earth as a moaning, self-flagellating repentant when your crimes are on THAT level. When you've decided that you no longer give one flying fuck about the feelings, aesthetics, general welfare or future of your fellow human beings and are more than happy to smugly profit from and assist in their utter degradation. The pure sadism and ego of it all is astounding. It's P.T. Barnum on steroids. And all in the name of a sense of "comedy" that died years ago and was never funny to begin with.

Always one to deliberately elude wit, sidestep the jocular, and shun the risible - Sandler goes for an angle of reflective maturation and dull badinage with the same tired jackasses he appeared with on SNL. The end product is obviously the result of some card game they were all having where, half in the bag, they began reeling off their lamest one-liners and insults at each other. Then they decided to put it down on paper.

Say, wouldn't it be funny if we all pretended to be boyhood chums and had to meet again years later at a funeral? We all each have our own crazy problems and oh-so disparate lifestyles that the situation could be ripe for all sorts of digs and jabs and shenanigans and monkeyshines and antics and high jinks and ... and ... apparently tit jokes.

All of these assholes could take a lesson from Tina Fey's completely effective, self-effacing brand of humor. She's the only SNL alum I can still tolerate unless I'm terribly high and Will Ferrell is doing something extraordinarily stupid. Which is most of the time, really.

I did realize a great truth while watching Grownups.      

Adam Sandler may be why there is anti-Semitism in the world.

Or maybe it's Ben Stiller.

Can't it be both?

Yet, it's not fair to levy these horrific criticisms on a film without first listing why one becomes ill at the offering of it.

A brief synopsis of gag:

Fat jokes (Kevin James) - 7.

Fat jokes (fat black momma of Myra Rudolph - mother-in-law of Chris Rock) - 4.

Fart jokes (see above mother-in-law) - 3.

Bunion jokes (puns on the word "toe" - fat black momma) -6.

Martin Lawrence or Tracy Jordan did not play "Fat Black Momma"- most original, innovative aspect of the film.

Breast feeding jokes - 5.

Selma Hayak accent and tit jokes -  4.

Selma Hayak using new name (Selma Hayak Pinault) in credits - 1.

David Spade as the womanizer - often - to the point of "WTF?".

Rob Schneider as a holistic hippie - Yes. Let's make the vegan the eternal asshole. Because believing in a vegetarian lifestyle is as stupid as anything (including role choices) Rob Schneider has ever been associated with. Jesus.

Maria Bello is inexplicably in this (as the brunt of the breast feeding jokes). Agent? Why? Does Sandler have compromising photos of her? Not that she's ever been that good, but, huh?

Joyce Van Patten. Joyce Van Patten.

Kicked in the nuts jokes - 1.

Pee jokes (water park) - 2.

Canadian stud joke - 1.

Overall maudlin theme of families finally understanding their kids and getting back to roots through a grudge basketball match - 1.

Trite sub-story of crashingly vapid, materialistic, image-obsessed children growing to appreciate the simplicity of skipping a stone across a lake and swinging on an old suspended tire - 1.

Total minutes Sandler took to write this while sitting around deciding how to cynically rape his next millions from the dumb - 14.

One liners eternally waiting for a laugh while others (in reaction shot) chuckle - 57.

The number of lives I have, wishing I had Adam Sandler's money, while knowing I am funnier than that tired, no talent jackass - 1.

Come to think of it, considering how Adam Sandler has made his money, the audience he panders to, and the type of comedy he indulges in, there is no possible way he should be allowed to do anything with the words "grownup", "adult", or "mature" in the title. I, for one, am off to watch some episodes of Arrested Development just to wash the stink from my eyes.

Comments

[Lance Lyle]

Chip,

I couldn't agree more...shame on anyone (other than you, or course) who would spend precious seconds watching this abhorrent monstrosity of a 'comedy.'

And Dugan does suck shit. (Before he was a 'director,' he was a hack actor).

Cheers,

Lance

[vandercleven]

You masochist.