Why would I subject myself to the torment of watching “Grown Ups 2”? Am I a glutton for punishment? Did I actually think this would be a watchable film? I mean let’s be honest, Adam Sandler hasn’t made a good movie in years and the first “Grown Ups” picture was a laborious exercise in stupidity. So there’s no reason to think this would be a funny and entertaining comedy, right? Or is there? After all it did rake in nearly $250 million at the box office. Oh who am I fooling? “Grown Ups 2” is yet another painfully bad film that I think goes down as one of Sandler’s worst (and that’s saying something).

Where do I begin when a movie is this terrible? How about with the opening scene which clearly tells you what you are in store for. Sandler wakes up one morning to find a huge deer in his bedroom. He scares the deer causing it to urinate all over his face. This sequence is out of the blue, amateurish, and embarrassingly unfunny. Actually that’s a good way to describe this entire movie. I know Sandler has a following and many people subscribe to this brand of humor, but I would rather have my eyeballs dug out with an ice cream scoop than to sit through this torture again.

There are so many egregious problems with this movie. Let’s start with the biggest issue – it’s not the slightest bit funny. I may be wrong but the object of most comedies is to make the audience laugh. If that is a key measurement of success “Grown Ups 2” fails miserably. I sat stone-faced through the majority of the film’s 100 minutes only slightly grinning on a couple of occasions. The humor is ostensibly juvenile and astoundingly idiotic. Sandler and his co-writing compadres seem to have no idea on how to conceive or setup a gag. Instead they wallow in cheap, lazy, and overused nonsense that have become signatures of Adam Sandler movies. For example take Sandler’s infatuation with toilet humor. We get farting, urinating, projectile vomiting, picking and eating from a belly button. All of this lowbrow garbage that serves as a substitute for actual good writing.

Another glaring flaw is the complete and utter lack of a plot. I’m still stunned at the absence of any cohesive and coherent story. It’s kind of like a series of poorly conceived comedy sketches pasted together to form a storyline. The problem is nothing ever happens. It’s as if Sandler is more interested in creating a playground for him and his buddies. He tosses in several weird and awkward cameos and small roles from the likes of Shaquille O’Neal, Adam Samberg, Steve Buscemi, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Taylor Lautner, Dan Patrick, and several more. Perhaps the filmmakers thought that drowning us in these appearances would divert our attention away from the absence of a decent narrative. It didn’t work.

I suppose Sandler, David Spade, Chris Rock, and Kevin James were trying to make another movie about childhood buddies and their middle-aged lives. Yet it’s interesting that these characters have become more childish and imbecilic in the three years since the first film. But I don’t think anyone involved really cares. There’s no sense of shame whatsoever. With an $80 million budget, this was clearly a cash-in for the whole bunch.

Remember I described the first scene of the movie? Well the final scene features a man passing gas on his wife. Do you get the gist of what “Grown Ups 2” is all about? This film incited more facepalms and head-shakes than laughs and the script feels like something Sandler could have scribbled on the palm of his hand. There isn’t an ounce of creativity, originality, or intelligence and if they weren’t making millions of dollars I would be embarrassed for everyone involved. Instead they are laughing all the way to the bank, and I promise you they were laughing a lot more than I was.

VERDICT – 0.5 STARS