GROWN UPS

GROWN UPS (PG-13 for various suggestive references, crudities, profanity):  Oh, spare me!  It's the perfect example of what not to do to make audiences sigh nostalgically & laugh over a Saturday Night Live rip-off.

A reunion of school buddies 30 years after having lived & loved through their beloved high school basketball days, now get together with wives & kids for one riotously fun-loving weekend at a lakeside cabin in New England.

It's the latest addition to a near perfect spate of loser comedies with Adam Sandler at the head, now joined by Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Scneider & company, planning to slobber their way through a series of unfunny improv situations that they, obviously, are enjoying - assuming we will be, too.  How wrong can they get?

Something of a script is credited to Sandler & Fred Wolf, but along with Dennis Dugan directing (infamous for "You Don't Mess with Zohan," and its ilk), just about anything the gang can come up with is grist for their mill.  Dig low & deep for anything from flatulence, breast feeding a 4-year-old, a Tyler Perry incident, public urination and other cringe-worthy moments and you have this overlong mess of unfunny material.

The film goes on & on & on with no apparent structure other than for moments of mostly improvised, unoriginal "humor," bits of nostalgia overflowing, among a group of people who obviously have never grown up - for a painful 103-minutes.  They're having fun while we suffer. Could be endured only by fans of the SNL gang or anyone who appreciates a sassy black wind-breaking grandma with a massive bunion.  (Grade:  F-)