Sandler stars as Lenny Feder, a successful Hollywood agent with spoiled kids, a nanny, and a high maintenance wife (Salma Hayek). Thirty years earlier, Lenny was a part of a championship-winning basketball team and when the coach dies, he’s reunited with the gang for the funeral after they’ve all grown up: Eric Lamonsoff (Kevin James), Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock), Marcus Higgins (David Spade), and Rob Hilliard (Rob Schneider). Of course, most of them come with spouses, offspring, and subplots. Eric’s wife Sally (Maria Bello) is still breastfeeding their son at age four (although James’ character’s existence is basically just an excuse for multiple “man fall down … funny” scenes). Kurt’s pregnant wife Deanne (Maya Rudolph) not only wears the pants in the family but poor Kurt is also berated by his overbearing mother-in-law (Ebony Jo-Ann). Marcus is the player, the one who comes unattached enough to hit on Rob’s unnaturally hot daughters. Finally, the overly sensitive Rob is the brunt of most of the gang’s jokes, not just for his hippie nature but for the fact that his wife (Joyce Van Patten) is a few decades older. Other regular Sandler collaborators including Colin Quinn, Steve Buscemi, and a nearly movie-stealing Tim Meadows pop up in small roles.

The plot of Grown Ups is almost non-existent and the movie actually works better when it isn’t being forced by co-writers Sandler and Fred Wolf (Joe Dirt) into something that no one involved is actually good at – you know, telling an actual story. What I mean is that the scenes in which the cast gets to merely provide variations on their well-worn personalities in a friendly, “guys hanging out” way can actually be pretty funny. The way they improvisationally rip on each other or merely just sit around having a beer has a believable feeling that can’t be forced. You can tell these five guys are actually friends and the importance of that shouldn’t be understated. You also could do a lot worse than having actors as extremely talented as Bello, Hayek, and Rudolph in your supporting cast.

Sadly, all three women are subjected to a stupid gross-out joke at one point or another. Every time Grown Ups threatens to maintain its believable rhythm for more than a few scenes, there’s a sequence such as the one where Maya Rudolph actually gets sprayed in the face with breast milk to remind the viewer they’re watching a dumb comedy; emphasis on the dumb. And Dugan is simply a horrible director when it comes to pacing and comic timing. Awful bits like the one in which Rock comes up with puns for his mother-in-law’s bunion like “Toe J. Simpson” are embarrassingly dragged out while the few bits that are actually funny are often hurried. And when the characters are all forced to add emotional subplots merely to produce a climax, the scene plays like a spoof of movies like Grown Ups except I don’t think Dugan is smart enough to be satirizing bad comedies that add unbelievable subplots for no good reason. He’s just directing one.

Adam Sandler continues to be what I would call a reluctant comedy star. He’s proven that he can act in films like Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish, and Funny People but most of his fans don’t see those movies, so he’s forced to go back to Dugan despite the fact that you can tell that his heart’s not in it nearly as much. For arguably the first time, it feels like he tried to bring a bit of the realistic characters he learned how to play in his less mainstream films to a big summer project but he was held back by a co-writer and director who probably still laugh every time they call him Billy Madison. He may be growing up but the people he works with have most certainly not.