Growing Up With The ‘Grown Ups’ Movies: A Deep Dive Into The Nostalgia Of Adam Sandler’s Comedies

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The ad wizards who wrote that copy were certainly onto something when they created this memorable tagline, but Decider’s “Take Two” series was specifically formulated in a laboratory by the world’s foremost pop culture scientists to provide a second chance for movies that made a less than stellar first impression upon their original release.

With the recent news of Adam Sandler earning his highest score on Rotten Tomatoes with his recent Netflix drop, You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah, it seems most timely to revisit two of his lower-scoring films and ask ourselves, did they deserve better?

Specifically, Grown Ups (2010) and its sequel Grown Ups 2 (2013) hold a special place in my heart, despite their rather “rotten” ratings of 10% and 8% on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively.

I decided to reach out to director Dennis Dugan to delve right in. Dugan, who has directed nine films under Sandler’s Happy Madison banner starting with the historic Happy Gilmore, describes himself as “not famous,” despite his movies having grossed almost $2 billion.

He also is no stranger to “terrible reviews.” Even having received a Razzie Award in 2012 for “Worst Director” — which he shows me over Zoom and says he keeps on his desk so that he “stays humble” — he has a refreshing outlook on receiving these “rotten” reviews from critics: “I have my job, [and] they have their job.”

Or in other words: “I don’t give a fuck what the critics think.”

For those unfamiliar with the series, Grown Ups follows a group of five middle school chums, former basketball teammates, and 1978 C.Y.O. City Championship victors — Lenny Feder (Sandler), Eric Lamonsoff (Kevin James), Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock), Marcus Higgins (David Spade), and Rob Hilliard (Rob Schneider) — who reunite after the passing of their beloved childhood basketball coach, Coach Buzzer (Blake Clark), and celebrate the 4th of July together with their respective families at a lake house.

While the storyline seems simplistic in nature (or as The Guardian lovingly put it, a “pitifully obnoxious celebration of mid-life male bonding”) there is a comforting theme about connecting with childhood friends. Confiding in each other as if no time has passed, busting each other’s chops, and taking part in the same ol’ shenanigans of decades prior — all of this and more serve as the main plot points of the film.

Quite similar to his character Lenny Feder — who is a Hollywood hot-shot agent who funds his friends’ 4th of July family retreat — Sandler has been known to look out for his friends in the industry. The five men that comprise the Grown Ups gang appear in other Happy Madison films alongside Sandler, or even star in their own films under the production company (as is the case for James in Paul Blart: Mall Cop and its sequel). From that familiarity, there is a chemistry among the cast that authentically emulates that of childhood friends.

Dugan affirms this notion with Decider, explaining that “the whole idea was to create this collaborative kind of soup of people.”

“The guys, they’re all comics and actors and they have a history behind them — good and bad and angry and drunk, whatever — and they just bring it all,” Dugan says. “It was very easy for them.”

I believe my personal appreciation for the Grown Ups films goes back to my father, who is an avid fan of Sandler’s early work, so much so that I could recognize the iconic Happy Madison intro from a fairly early age. Since I was just nine-years-old at the time of its debut, the first Grown Ups film essentially served as my introduction to Sandler’s slapstick, often underappreciated comedy.

And the cast introduced me and other young viewers like myself to some of Hollywood’s biggest names at an early age, granting me a sense of familiarity I could gauge in other films and TV shows I would eventually come to know and love. Outside of the five leads, I became familiar with Salma Hayek (Roxanne Chase-Feder), Maya Rudolph (Deanne McKenzie) , and Steve Buscemi (Wiley), just to name a few.

“We just had crazy great actors in it,” Dugan acknowledges, citing the “five guys and all of their wives.”

Dugan started out as an actor himself, which translated into one of his greatest strengths as a director: “talking to actors.”

“I understand where they’re coming from, I understand their insecurity, I understand all of that, so what I try to do is make the set just as comfortable and as easygoing and as fun as possible,” he says.

In typical Sandler fashion, childish, slapstick humor lies at its core. Dugan notes that “Sandler likes the stunts to be as brutal and hard-hitting as possible.”

One particular scene that likely made many viewers gasp (including myself) was when James tries his hand at the rope swing in order to show his kids the kind of fun that he and his four friends would have when they were their age. However, this plan goes awry when he refuses to let go of the rope once he’s hovering over the lake.

“Too high! Too high!” he exclaims, seconds prior to being swung right back into a tree.

“I thought we broke that [stunt] guy’s neck when he hit the tree, that stunt man, holy shit!” Dugan recalls. “The audience reaction in the theater to Kevin hitting that tree was always, ‘GASP.’”

Nonetheless, Dugan says “the approach was always safety first” in regard to stunts. Though admittedly outrageous, the stunts don’t just provoke gasps, but plenty of laughs. Even the stars on screen are caught smiling and laughing, which just further plays into the hysterics of growing up captured in the film.

But even I’ll admit that the comedic elements of the film aren’t always the most tasteful. Jokes about sexualizing women and body image aren’t P.C. However, the majority of the humor is often self-deprecating, and no one remains untouched, providing for pure, shameless comedy that I think most people can enjoy.

The film continues its nostalgia trip through its soundtrack, which is filled with classic rock hits from the ’70s and ’80s like Cheap Trick’s “Just Got Back,” Hot Chocolate’s “Every 1’s A Winner,” and The Kinks’ “Better Things.”

It turns out that these tracks weren’t just a “happy mistake.” Dugan tells Decider that “there was as much energy put into the music as there was to the script,” and credits a music supervisor who spent “hours and hours and hours [with] his assistant basically going through the entire catalog of every record that had ever been made.”

The nostalgia continues in Grown Ups 2, which premiered three years after the original film. Taking place over the course of just one day, the sequel follows the majority of the main cast (sans Schneider) after Lenny moves his family back to his hometown, where his three buddies still live with their families. The four men are prompted to reassess their age following a run-in with the menacing frat bros of Kappa Eta Sigma.

The sequel features familiar faces like Taylor Lautner (The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl and Twilight), David Henrie (Wizards of Waverly Place), Patrick Schwarzenegger and Milo Ventimiglia (Gilmore Girls). And Disney Channel stars China Anne McClain (A.N.T. Farm) and the late Cameron Boyce (Jessie) played the children of Rock and Sandler respectively in both films, preceding their Disney series roles that both began just a year after in 2011.

When asked about the purpose behind bringing in these young stars for cameos, Dugan summarizes the process as follows: “We’d bring up somebody, and then we’d go, ‘no, they’re not us.’”

“It was like our gang, you know,” he says, referring to the tight-knit cast. “To come into it, I think probably for some people, [it] was a little scary. It’s a friendly gang, but that came up a lot.”

Like many sequels that preceded it and many sequels that followed it, Grown Ups 2, in my humble opinion, did not live up to its predecessor. Do I think that it deserves an 8%? Absolutely not.

“Just historically, comedies don’t get good reviews,” Dugan notes.

He also elaborates on the “disconnect” between a given film’s critic reviews and its box office earnings. Grown Ups grossed $271 million worldwide, while Grown Ups 2 made just under $247 million, per IMDb. In light of Decider’s “Take Two” week, this phenomenon raised interesting questions.

“So, I’m not saying right or wrong, but who’s right and who’s wrong?” he asks. “And if I were a critic, I would say, ‘Wow! Why is my opinion so out of line with people who are buying tickets?’”

Despite these fair points, Dugan acknowledges that his films “keep rolling along” and that people “keep discovering them.” Viewers like me are a fair example of just that, and I hope that those out there reading this rediscover the timeless fun of the Grown Ups films. Or at the very least, get a good chuckle out of Steve Buscemi in a full body cast.