Movie Review: Grown Ups 2 (+trailer)

In Grown Ups 2 Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade and Adam Sandler display superb comic timing.

It is an extremely rare movie that can offer a very limited plot, not much action, but still delivers full-on entertainment.

The large audience, aged from 10 to 60, began laughing within minutes of the start and the frivolity ended only when the film did. It really was a laugh a minute.

In this sequel to the hugely popular 2010 comedy Grown Ups, we get to sit in on the next stage in the lives of this somewhat dysfunctional group of 40-somethings.

The original movie had five schoolmates reuniting to mourn the death of their high-school basketball coach.

Since school, fate had handed out very different lives to the boys and little has changed this time around.

Lenny Feder (Adam Sandler) has moved back to his home town after making his fortune in Los Angeles.

He discovers that nothing much has changed, with old bullies and new bullies waiting for the unsuspecting.

Lenny wants his children to grow up with the children of his old schoolmates - Eric Lamonsoff (Kevin James), Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock) and Marcus Higgins (David Spade). That may sound simple enough but the town's weird collection of characters makes that harder than expected.

At every turn Lenny comes up against another problem person, whether it be a schizophrenic bus driver, drunken cops on skis, a psycho primary school girlfriend or college frat boys with bad attitudes.

Everything comes to a head when Lenny throws a huge party and every weirdo in town decides to pop in for a visit, meaning mayhem is the only possible outcome.

There is nothing cerebral about Grown Ups 2. The humour is basic, even coarse, and many of the gags are physical.

But the writers have tried to exact laughs, and they have succeeded.

I don't think I've laughed as much in another movie this year.

Grown Ups 2
(PG) 101 minutes
Rating: 3.5 / 5