GROWN UPS

Are the worst thing that American men, apparently, can be. About as funny as a snuff film, which is to say, pretty funny, in the sense of the question, “Does this clam dip taste funny to you?” In the end, Adam Sandler (“The Hanukkah Song”), as a super-successful agent recalled from L.A. to New England by the death of his old coach, is enjoined by the townie (Colin Quinn) into a rematch of the basketball game he won 30 years before, and Sandler now throws the game because, as he later whispers to his wife (Salma Hayek), “The Baileys of this world could use a win once in a while.” The implication being, “Hollywood” (the town that Capra built, and Quinn’s derisive nickname for Sandler) could have easily created a hilarious summer movie that would ease our minds even as it stoked a mild envy in our hearts, but out of well-deserved pity, and for our own good, they’ve left the world on screen as tedious, dispiriting, and glum, this time, as the one in which we daily wallow.

Cassavetes’s Husbands—aging man-group confronts mortality—but with the glee of possibility, the heady musk of testosterone, and genuine hanky panky replaced by pitch-perfect contemporary anomie, impotence, and desire reduced to porn. Instead of Gazzara’s growl, our emblem’s a family dog whose vocal cords were cut to prevent barking and who, in a running joke, is often wished killed. No one’s a super-spy. Recently laid-off Kevin James is overweight, sneaks food, and suffers urinary dysfunction. Chris Rock: castrated house husband. David Spade: sad, superannuated player. Rob Schneider: “sensitive.” Sandler’s ashamed to be rich. Who will pick up a dinner check, anatomized in grim detail.

But as kids they’d played Chutes and Ladders—gorgeous game of whimsical fate—and run from an arrow they’d shot into the sun. Now they find a single burst of joy at the water park where their sons do a great take—the hottie walks by and they crush their ice cream cones. A whiff of chlorine. Would we rather he put away that final jumper? Muggiest day of the year, the AC on the fritz, I bump into Diana in the theater and after the show she tells me that at one point something small and furry went running across her toes…