“Boys will be boys. . . some longer than others.” That is the tagline Columbia Pictures put on Grown Ups in 2010, and it is the most honest thing attached to the movie. Dennis Dugan directed. Adam Sandler and Fred Wolf wrote it. The film runs 102 minutes and stars Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade and Rob Schneider as five friends who won a junior high basketball championship in 1978 and reunite for a Fourth of July weekend after their old coach dies.
It grossed $272.2 million against a $75 million budget, the highest-grossing Happy Madison film. That number is the whole story of why this movie exists and why a sequel followed in 2013, with a third film in development as of 2026. It is not a story about quality. Sixteen years after release, the ledger still reads the same way.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Five Friends and a Dead Coach
The plot is a setup, not a screenplay. Each friend arrives with one problem and one trait:
- Lenny Feder (Sandler) is a Hollywood talent agent married to fashion designer Roxanne (Salma Hayek Pinault), with three kids.
- Eric Lamonsoff (Kevin James) says he co-owns a lawn furniture company; his wife Sally (Maria Bello) is still breastfeeding their son Bean.
- Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock) stays home with two kids while his pregnant wife Deanne (Maya Rudolph) supports them, and her mother Ronzoni (Ebony Jo-Ann) lives with them.
- Marcus Higgins (David Spade) is a slacker and a lothario.
- Rob Hilliard (Rob Schneider) is on his fourth wife, Gloria (Joyce Van Patten), much older than him.
That is five men and five sets of problems, delivered in a lump. The coach, Robert “Buzzer” Ferdinando, dies offscreen. The friends gather for the funeral, and Lenny rents a lake house so everyone can stay through the holiday. His own family plans to leave early for Roxanne’s fashion show in Milan.
Arrow Roulette and a Grudge
What follows is a weekend of set pieces. Lenny’s childhood rival Dickie insists Lenny’s foot was out of bounds on the winning shot in 1978 and wants a rematch. The men spread Buzzer’s ashes. Rob breaks down about his failed marriages and admits he invited his estranged daughters, Jasmine, Amber and Bridget. Then the grown men play a game called arrow roulette — they shoot an arrow straight up and stand there — and it lands in Rob’s foot. He snaps at Gloria for suggesting a holistic remedy.
Boys will be boys. . . some longer than others.
That tagline is doing a lot of work for a movie whose biggest comic idea is an arrow in a foot.
The cast is deep on paper. Steve Buscemi plays Wiley. Di Quon plays Rita. The problem is what the film asks them to do, which is mostly stand near Sandler while he wins.
Why the Weekend Does Not Hold
Grown Ups wants to be a hangout movie about men who never grew up, and it has the right pieces for one. Five comedians with distinct rhythms, a lake house, a holiday weekend, a funeral to open the door.
What the film does with those pieces is the failure. The jokes are not built; they are announced. Sally still nursing Bean is a running gag with one note. Marcus is a lothario, so he leers. Rob married four times, so he weeps. Each friend gets one trait and the script returns to it whenever the scene needs a beat.
The basketball championship in 1978 is the film’s only real idea about friendship — that a shared win at thirteen can hold five men together for thirty years. The movie mentions it and moves on. Dickie’s grudge over a foot on the baseline is the closest Grown Ups comes to a theme: men who cannot let go of a game they played as boys. It gets one scene and a rematch, then the arrow.
Lenny has the money, so Lenny rents the house. The movie treats his success as a fact rather than a subject, and the script pushes his boys outdoors without ever asking what the family is actually for. That is a missed chance, not an arc.
The Score
Grown Ups is not a failure of talent. It is a failure of nerve. The cast could carry a movie about five men confronting what thirty years did to them. Instead the film hands them a weekend of bits and a dead coach who exists only to get them in one place.
The $272.2 million gross is real and it matters — it tells you audiences wanted exactly this, a low-stakes comedy about men behaving like boys on a lake. The tagline promised it. The movie delivered it.
A sequel arrived in 2013, and a third film is in development as of 2026. That is the clearest verdict available: Grown Ups did not need to be good to keep going. It only needed to be easy to watch.
3.0/10 (Metacritic 30/100).
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