Critics agree: 'Grown Ups 2' is summer's worst movie - Los Angeles Times
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Critics agree: ‘Grown Ups 2’ is summer’s worst movie

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The critics have spoken, and “Grown Ups 2” is the winner -- as the worst movie of the summer so far.

Although the Adam Sandler comedy is expected to do good business in its debut this weekend, the sequel has attracted a blizzard of critical bashes, generating only 7% positive notices, according to the aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.

That’s an improvement of sorts from the initial wave of reviews for the Sandler film, where a rock-bottom 0% of the “Grown Ups 2” reviews were listed as favorable.

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Review: ‘Grown Ups 2’ refuses to leave the sandbox

The scoring was a little more kind at Metacritic, where “Grown Ups 2” received 21 out of a possible 100 points.

Compared to even some of the summer’s biggest critical busts, “Grown Ups 2” has been trashed harder than Will Smith’s “After Earth” (11% positive reviews), Bradley Cooper’s “The Hangover Part III” (19%), Johnny Depp’s “The Lone Ranger” (26%) and Vince Vaughn’s “The Internship” (36%).

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In addition to starring in the film, Sandler produced and co-wrote “Grown Ups 2.”

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Like eager kids dropping baited hooks into an overstocked trout pond, the critics had little trouble landing colorful “Grown Ups 2” slams.

Mark Olsen in the Los Angeles Times: “With the slack, lackadaisical effort of ‘Grown Ups 2,’ Sandler has perhaps revealed himself not as a confrere of [Judd] Apatow, who directed him in ‘Funny People’ to a performance both crude and soulful. Rather, he’s the white Tyler Perry: smart enough to know better, savvy enough to do it anyway, lazy enough not to care.”

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Matt Patches, Time Out New York: “Put it this way: In the first five minutes, a deer walks into the star’s bedroom and urinates on his face. It’s all downhill from there.”

Claudia Puig in USA Today: “Mystifyingly, the movie manages to emerge plot-free. Instead, it offers a succession of humorless gross-out gags, fat jokes, suggestive posturing, bullying, belches and pratfalls.”

Stephanie Merry, the Washington Post: “‘Grown Ups 2’ isn’t merely mindless. At times it seems to actually drain IQ points from its viewers while wasting a talented cast of ‘Saturday Night Live’ alums, who are all capable of being much smarter and so much funnier.”

Sara Stewart, the New York Post: “Sandler sums it up himself halfway through: ‘We’re irrelevant! We’re losers! We’re old!’ Age isn’t the problem, buddy; nobody is more in touch with his inner obnoxious 6-year-old than you. But two out of three ain’t bad.”

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