No need to spend a lot of time on this.  As a follow-up to the largely unfunny Grown Ups of 2010, this comedy delivers the same type of goofy slapstick, cringe-worthy wacky character caricatures and surprising cameo appearances.  It’s very episodic, with little narrative thread or tension.  It is funny here and there, yet feels like a home movie for Adam Sandler and his friends somehow being projected in a real movie theater.

Dennis Dugan’s movie is not ambitious at all; he and Sandler know exactly what they are offering as entertainment: comic vignettes linked by friendship, with a hefty dose of sentimentality overwhelmed at the climax by a community fist fight.  This is modern filmmaking at its laziest, with only the casting of incredibly hot Salma Hayek as Sandler’s wife worth the price of admission.

Aside from being completely unnecessary — was anybody demanding a follow-up? — Grown Ups 2 suffers from being silly, stupid and even slow.  It’s all pleasant enough, and perhaps this represents a modern version of the Andy Hardy or Blondie movies of the 1940s and ’50s, considering how wispy and family-friendly they were.  Times have certainly changed, however, and Judge Hardy would close down any car wash that operated like the one in Grown Ups 2.  It’s a dud.  ☆.  29 July 2013.