Who's In It: Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Kevin James, Salma Hayek Pinault, Maya Rudolph, Maria Bello, Joyce Van Patten, Ebony Jo-Ann, Jamie Chung, Colin Quinn, Steve Buscemi, Tim Meadows
The Basics: Five friends reunite for the funeral of their elementary school basketball coach. Not that it matters much. It could have been a reunion about anything. The whole movie is just a bunch of middle-aged guys hanging out and mocking each other. Then they pee on things. That's funny. Someone falls down. That's funny too. They talk about how fat Kevin James is. He sure is fat. It's hilarious. A timely and relevant O.J. Simpson joke--sorry, my mistake, make that two really timely and relevant O.J. jokes--are told to much laughter all around. Then there's the big game and personal revelations. That part involves emotions. At least that's what I'm guessing it must have said in the script, like before the heartfelt lines of dialogue there was probably a written reminder that said something like, "This is supposed to be moving, so fake it if you can. No big deal if you don't feel like it." Funerals are really great.
What's The Deal: I've decided that Adam Sandler is, in real life, a genius of cinema whose mission it is to move us all inexorably closer to the moment of absolute numbness when Ass, the movie within a movie from Idiocracy, the one about a farting butt that also enjoys some comic scratching, is a reality. There's no other reasonable explanation for the way his films actually get stupider, simpler and less funny as time goes on. Because it couldn't be that he's just figured out that monumental laziness is something people will still pay good money to watch. That can't possibly be it, can it?
You Know You're In Fancytime Moviemaking Land When The Ashes Of A Corpse Are Used To Create Comedy Gold: In this film it involves fried chicken covered with the dead coach's ashes. Attentive cinephiles will remember a similar ashes-of-the-dead bit in Why Did I Get Married, Too? from the equally sophisticated Tyler Perry.
Even Better: You know what's great? When one guy in a movie tells a joke and the camera cuts to all his buddies laughing at that joke, one by one. It reminds you that jokes are funny when you see other people laugh at them too. This movie does that every single time someone makes a joke. It's a generous gesture for audience members in need of guidance.