Plumbing the Death Star - How Does the Economy Work in Grown Ups 2? with The Worst Idea of All Time

Episode Date: April 10, 2022

To celebrate the Melbourne International Comedy Festival two of the worst podcast ideas of all time; Plumbing the Death Star and The Worst Idea of All Time have come together for a very special cross over episode where we delve deep into the rich universe of Grown Ups 2. So sit back, close your eyes and listen to 5 grown men dissect one of the many Adam Sandler’s cinematic masterpieces. And don’t forget to subscribe to The Worst Idea of All Time. Also you’re probably better off if you unsubscribe to us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To celebrate the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, two of the worst podcast ideas of all time, Plumbing the Death Star and Worst Idea of All Time, have come together for a very special crossover episode where we delve deep into the rich universe of Grown Ups 2. So sit back, close your eyes and listen to five grown men dissect one of the many Adam Sandler's cinematic masterpieces. And don't forget to subscribe to Worst Idea of All Time. You're probably better off if you unsubscribe to us though.

You're listening to the Sands Pants Network. Let's just kick it off. Let's just do it. If we fuck up the intro, we can just do it. It's just for fun. If you're having fun, they're having fun. Just don't even think about it. Yeah.

Cheers. It's just for fun. If you're having fun, they're having fun, you know, just don't even think about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks. Cheers. Yeah, yeah. We've done. It's nice. By the way, I say that to anyone I meet, I say that to even if it's not about a podcast or comedy. I think it's like the most inane, funniest thing you can say. But just honestly, just throw this one away. We've got a great one. You've got to be Joel's dad. You simply must. With Tim's inspiration, I feel like I can finally actually do the introduction. It's exciting.

Hey everyone, and welcome to a very special edition, a crossover episode between the worst idea of all time and plumbing the death star. I'm Joel. I'm also Joel. I'm Jackson. I'm Guy. And I'm Tim. And today... Oh, you go.

And today we are asking the important questions, like how does the economy work in Grown Ups 2? So, Guy and Tim, you're obviously Grown Ups 2 experts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Plumbing the Death Star. Team Plumbing the Death Star have seen the movie once together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think I've seen it once by myself. I need to confess, it was something of a phone watch.

The movie did not captivate me much. That's okay. It doesn't matter if we didn't really watch it because you two obviously have watched it enough times for all of us. Before we go on, let's get some quick math. We've got a phone watch. What's the collective total, do you think, of viewing Grown Ups 2 for your side of the podcast equation?

I would say that when we watched it together, I was paying enough attention to say that it when we watched it together yeah i was paying enough attention to say that it wasn't a phone watch my phone may not have even been with me so that's one um and at one point i looked over at my good friend jackson who was on his phone i was like did you see that that was so funny which felt bad to doing grown-ups too and he wasn't paying yeah i didn't see what i've always so funny. Although I think I might have tried to lie and say I did, so you didn't ask me follow-up questions. I was like, you missed it.

That was probably the best joke of the movie, and then I did the joke for you. I know you're reminiscing about the broader experience, but I just have to know what the joke was. Yeah, I'm so curious. So at that point in the movie, it was, see, because I've only seen it once, characters' names, not going to be great

with them yeah physical description will do and we will be able to deliver it was david's beyond ironside from vikings that character yeah david spade's son brayden brayden thank you so brayden when it's just a weird cutaway where he is sitting in like a floating inflatable tube thing. I think he just says, I love summer. No, he says one word as the camera slowly zooms into him and he dead-eyes the camera. Summertime. And he says that

because he sees those two other boys, Adam Sandler and Chris Rock's sons pissing beer out of their cocks. And he just goes, summertime. And it's good. It's threatening. It's beer out of their cocks. And he just goes, summertime. And it's good. It's threatening. It's menacing. It's incredible.

It's a promise of whimsy. That's what I like about it. It just doesn't match the rest of the movie whatsoever. It's like a gif. They just put a gif in the middle of the movie and they're like, this will work. Yeah. I feel like a lot of the movie is kind of a different movie than the movie that we're watching.

You know what I mean? It just feels there's not much like it's all disjointed. It just feels like when there's a gag that's run its course, it just ends. It's beautiful. There's no real closure to a lot of things. They do a sitcom thing where they often, and I've kind of forgotten this because it has been a little while

between drinks, but they do a little musical interlude to make a joke work. They'll deliver a punchline and then it'll be like, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. It's like, wait a minute, this is a movie. Yeah, but it's a welcome reminder that a movie is whatever you make it. Yeah, that's true. If it goes for an hour and a half, you can do whatever you want

and call it a movie, and you're fine. That's why we got movie length. That's why we have that as an option. I just want to answer your collective question. Probably between us, between 104 and 112 times. Yeah. So between us,

4? Versus 104 to 114. So there's quite a bit of a difference. I will say that watching this with people that hadn't seen it, even though hadn't seen it even though i had seen it once and vaguely remembered it knowing that the movie opens with a deer piss joke yeah it's good it's a thing that happened oh yeah presumably it's meant to be funny the

family take it in their stride yeah and we'll get to actually answering the question in a moment we've just got to get some feelings about growing up yeah yeah yeah we gotta yeah of course yeah because adam sandler's character gets pissed on by a deer and he's scared about the deer being in his room at first but then when the deer's out of the house yeah they're just like oh that's just like a yeah it's nice that him and his son shared deer piss yeah like the same deer piss yeah do you know what's weird though and this is like an observation you would only get after you know a collective triple digits effort on the side of the the pond so this deer, right, I had never realized this before, but the deer is the whole reason at the very end of the movie

when the party gets disrupted. So there's a big fight, but then the college kids all get scared by the deer. So this deer at the start of the movie elicits very little fear out of Adam Sandler's family, but then elicits so much fear out of an entire college campus of kids. Yeah, because it eats a man's penis. It eats a man's penis right off.

If I saw a deer eat a man's penis, I might be scared of deer from then on, really. It's terrifying. You don't expect it from a bear. A deer? Yeah, I think in a way I'm already a little bit scared that not a deer will eat my penis, but maybe a horse or a cow will.

You overestimate how appealing your penis is to these vegetarian animals. Well, I think it's because... That's a worst case scenario. That's a lot, you know, that's their last option. I think it's because they said when you feed a deer or not a deer, feed a cow or a horse a carrot, they're like, you need to have a flat palm because otherwise they'll think your fingers are carrots and i guess in my head i'm like if a horse has such a poor understanding of what a carrot is if i'm in a situation where i'm you know trace being around the farmyard dude is the day you were born yeah and there's a chance that a horse will bite my penis off that's scary you you put yourself in a situation where a horse is at risk of mistaking your cock for a carrot and that's entirely on you like the horse is just operating on instinct jackson normally i

wouldn't team up with guy to bully someone but take some fucking personal responsibility would you if you are so frequently in an environment with horses butt naked your member blowing in the wind i think that's you need to take a look at yourself. Yeah. Run and be scared. Have some self-respect. Put on some pants. This would be rude to say if I was bleeding from my crotch. If I was lying there and you're like,

well, we all came here to be nude at the farm, dude. We put on clothes to pat this horse and here you are. Even then, with the information you've given us,

I think it would be totally fair enough. I would take no pity. I'd say, what did you expect? We literally warned you about this i'm sorry look i am sorry you have no dick anymore and that that horse ate your penis

and that you're currently bleeding quite a substantial amount yeah but you've got to understand that once you're healed up and aren't gonna die from getting a dick eat by a horse yeah we aren't going to be kind about this. We will be stern and be like, well, yeah, you got what you deserved. Please call an ambulance. In a minute. To berate you more. Stop admonishing me.

You know what? Maybe we'd take sympathy and pity and we'd really hold your hand. We'd wait for the paramedics and we'd usher you to the hospital. And then you'd be put under anesthetic for whatever surgery is required to mend the mess that you have created by your own hand and uh what we'd say is to the surgeon we'd give them a sort of a flaccid slightly old cat and we'd say sew that on it feels weird that you guys have taken such a pop shot at grown-ups for having a deer piss joke at the start and we've been doing an extended roof about Jackson's penis getting eaten off like it feels like an hour

now so to move this on I'm going to open a beer onto the mic what do you expect like what are you left with to talk about yeah come on I mean so but broadly speaking what were your experiences of the film today were they positive were they negative

I think they were sort of neutral mostly negative i feel for my end yeah it falls into the category of movie for me where it's a positive experience because i like to be reminded that movies like this exist yeah and because there's a lot of very baffling decisions in it that uh yeah pretty memorable in fact it's a similar experience i had to when I saw the Adam Sandler vehicle blended in cinemas. Yeah. And there's a Dale Stane cameo just in the middle of the film. And I was like, who is this for? This is an American film set in Africa, which has now just been revealed to be South Africa, featuring a South African cricket player.

And there's a joke about how cricket isn't the same as baseball. Yeah. And I'm like, this is in a movie and it made it all the way to cinema and i just for adam yeah a lot of stuff that's in the productions it's for adam sandler but then even adam sandler doesn't seem to care about cricket why is dale stain in the movie yeah i don't know to me it was just like it does give you hope that you can really produce anything yeah um and someone will watch it and find it entertaining which is really nice to know. Grown Ups 2 made like 300 million dollars or something. Yeah, which is an insane

amount of money. I just, I don't know, it feels like, you know, they say comedy is a medium that ages real quickly and I feel that this one was aging as they were doing it. I think part of that's why I like it. I like that I can watch a bad movie and be like, that was just sort of

unashamedly a bad movie. It doesn't impact my life any. It's crazy that these were some of the comedy greats of the 90s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On the 2000s. These were like, no, these are the funniest motherfuckers that we can chuck on screen. Don't worry.

Everything they do is going to be good. And I think they themselves are like, man, we've been out of the game for a while. We've got to bring our A game for these films. Man, there's some funny people out there. It's going to be good. It's going to be good. Chris Rock being in this movie still to this day shakes me to my core.

He is an important comedian. And it's just like, what is he talking about? This would have come out either during the production or just before he made Top 5. Which was Chris Rock's return, him in a star vehicle in a film, and also it was a critically well-received film. They've all made good, save for maybe Kevin James.

Their career has all maintained comedic value. No, Kevin James actually has redeemed himself because he did all of those hilarious online videos where he would insert himself into, and they were brilliant. those hilarious online videos. Oh, that's true. And they were brilliant. They were brilliant. It was so good. He was the sound guy.

He would put himself, yeah, he was, that's right. He was the sound guy on like famous sets. Did you not see these? No. I thought I seen them too.

They're fucking well done. It's just like, they'll be shooting. I am legend or something. And then, you know, the, the frames just sort of turns a little bit and Kevin James is like,

drop the boom onto Will Smith. It's good shit. Yeah, that's fine. Ryan Gosling. And Ryan Gosling is doing the whole speech from, which film was it in? A speech from Ryan Gosling? Yeah, most of his films, I guess.

A romantic one, if this helps. Crazy Stupid Love? Nah, nah. The one where he climbs a ferris wheel, I think. Okay. Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's. Oh, The Notebook.

Yeah, The Notebook. And now ferris wheel, I think. Okay. Alzheimer's. The Notebook. The Notebook. Yeah. And now a quick word from our sponsors. Are you like me, a big old fantasy nerd who maybe dabbled in Magic the Gathering in high school but then had to stop playing it because it ruined the friendship when one of you played the Slivers deck and your good friend Steve, who you no longer talk to, had a bad time? Or maybe you saw Lord of the Rings and

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I'd just like to circle back to Jackson's point about taking comfort and knowing it's bad and that's fine and you meet it on its terms and it makes it inoffensive. And to think of all of these guys as comedy titans or whatever at different phases in their career, and it is like there's a weird calm that washes over you and seeing that none of them are trying.

Yeah, absolutely. At least to us as an audience, agreement that none of them are going to put an absolutely. At least to us as an audience, agreement that none of them are going to put an effort in. And watching Chris Rock act in this movie today, I was like, I can act that good. And I'm like, I can't act. But he's walking around being like, no, today's your diaper day.

To know that we could have been in Grown Ups 2, that's the comfort. If the five of us, yeah, I did that math right, did Grown Ups 2, it would be just as good. too. That's the comfort. If the five of us, yeah, I did that math right, did grown-ups too, it would be just as good. The real hard part would be the five of us cumulatively having

worthy comedy careers that would get us to a point where we just have the right to make grown-ups too. And so I say to the other four of you, catch up. Get on my little trailblazer, Tim. I don't know, it's very nice, tim yeah i don't know it's very nice like as a like as a business owner it's really nice that you can openly sort of commit i guess

tax fraud yeah um and everyone is just okay with it yeah it's like i'm doing this for a lovely holiday and a catch up with my friends and everyone is like yeah great we're on board enjoy yeah so here's some money other highlights of the film is clearly where there's just no script for certain scenes which is fine for like the comedy titans of the 90s There's also a lot of children in this film So often you'll have actors

improvising and the children who aren't meant to be responding in the way they're responding just pissing themselves laughing in the background What's his name? Nick Swanson Yeah, Swanson You know, improvising about how he's laughing in the background yeah well what's his name nick swanson yes swanson is um you know improvising about how he's cooked as a bus driver and then you've got adam sandler's kids in the background just laughing non-stop i have to say just because like it would pay me to leave

this out but i watched this on netflix today and we did our whole season i think using a pirated copy we downloaded online um And they've cut jokes out of the Netflix one that I'm so used to seeing and it really messed me up. So there's a Nick Swanson line about how when they first meet up with him and Adam Sandler asks how he's doing and he

says that he got floated a couple pills at a Cypress Hill concert. And like understandably in this children's comedy movie that joke has been cut well but yeah because we watched it uh because we're currently in the uk we watched it on sky yeah and that jerk was still in it yeah thank god cool cool cool well the joke that i really missed because i actually missed it and the way the comedic beat worked instead the joke ended on being like uh she caught me eating a banana with my butt and then the punch

line the or the tag is like, I shouldn't have done it at her mum's house. And it gets out. And I'm like, I don't like the joke, but comedically that makes sense. You haven't just let him do one improv and left it all in. But the joke I really missed is it's a scene,

the surrounding scene I don't miss so much. It's in a gymnasium and it's Chris Rock's daughter and Bumpty. And they're sort of like flirting on the rafters or something. And then the gym teacher, who's a sports broadcaster in America called Dan Patrick, he throws a ball at Bump D and knocks him out and then he goes, who wants to watch me climb a rope? It's like always stood out.

It's just such a phenomenal delivery and it's actually a funny line as well. And why would they cut that? It's not a film too. What? That's so and why would they cut And they cut that too what that's So baffling do they cut it because the Follow-up joke which is Significantly less funny is Bumpty lying on the ground looking up The gym teacher's shorts and makes a comment

About his balls that was gone Too I think of course you could yeah that Was gone too you couldn't cut that line and then Just have a scene of Bumpty looking at a gym teacher's Foot that's more sinister. I guess that's why they cut it. Yeah. Because the punchline to them,

the punchline to us was his fantastic delivery on who wants to watch me climb a rope, but to them, it's the kids seeing the balls of the gym teacher. Yeah. So I wonder if for some reason- We can't have kids watching balls, so we'll cut this and we'll cut that. Or it could just have been pacing.

They were like, it's a bit too long. Yeah. We'll cut this out we'll cut that or it could just be pacing they were like it's a bit too long yeah yeah we'll cut this out that uh one hour 40 minute run time we can get it down to 135 baby i did it was actually when i checked at the start it was running 136 on netflix so your instincts are phenomenal joe money things that still work in this movie john lovitz yes david spade i'm never upset to see him on screen he's got an easygoing charisma i think because it feels like he's never trying when he's not trying it works for him yeah he's got another joke that took me by surprise in the movie that made me laugh yeah out loud even though it's a very 90s joke the movie puts like in quotes unappealing women yeah in situations david spade and then it's referenced that he slept with them. Yeah. And then it happens again

when the pizza delivery lady delivers a pizza and his son's, Braden, is that his name? Son's name? You got it. Nice.

Well done. He's there and he grabs a pizza that's like the weird, incredibly intensely sexual flirting. Yeah. And then Braden's looking at his dad and David Spade shuts the door

and he's just like, they're not all tense. Yeah. It's good. It's genuinely funny in the movie not all tans. Yeah, it's good. He's genuinely funny in the movie. Yeah. It's great delivery on that line. The moments between Higgins, David Spade and his son, Braden,

are like, you know, when he arrives and he's on the phone, he cups McGee and all that shit you can take or leave. But then when he shows up and he's got the drawing of the man, he's like, you're him. Yeah, without the hat. That's like, you know. Yeah, it's very good like if you squint there is potentially like maybe four different potentially good films yeah in this film so you've got like a deadbeat dad kind of connecting with their very aggressive uh son that they've just found out about you've got like someone being like oh where

i'm aging out i'm approaching this kind of thing where I can't do the things that I used to do, and I don't want a fourth kid, but my wife, you know, oh God, she's pregnant. What am I going to do? Dealing with that. You've also got a nice coming-of-age film between all the kids there. You've got something where, what,

Kevin James loves his mum too much? I don't really know what that was about. But there's definitely some nice films that you call it, nice stories. But surely it's all coincidental. Surely it's all. It's just like David Spade was like,

it'd be funny if I had a huge son. Yeah, that would be funny. Write it in. A huge son with a shit-like facial mustache. And it is funny to have a huge son. That's not untrue yeah i like the idea of it because when you write a movie or like not that i've written and made a movie but when you create anything and you write it down and then there's a separate team of people in production

who work on it yeah you show up and they're like we can't find the right color giant tire and you're like oh man like it didn't have to be green i just wrote that you know and this movie reeks of moments where adam sandler showed up to set and they've got all of the elaborate things that they've called for i can see him in his like production office just throwing a rubber ball at the wall and someone's writing down what he's saying and then the tire runs through the entire town and then we jump off a waterfall there's a raft. The raft gag's so good, we're going to use it twice.

It's the second movie I've seen recently that has a joke about a man's head going into another man's arsehole. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hancock being the other one, the 2008 Will Smith superhero vehicle. Because we'd watched that recently for a couple of episodes. And in that, people do go in assholes like yeah yeah yeah and so when because i'd never seen grown-ups so obviously you were like you warned me you were like there's gonna be some david spade goes in kevin kevin james's asshole and then i was almost disappointed when because i think i think my personal fan theory is that he didn't really you know i mean it would be like the logistics of it of kevin james

falling ass first naked onto david spade yeah and clearly you're like oh he fell on his head that's what well i'm assuming a digit must have been because he was shielding his face right but like the angle and the velocity and all that just kind of angling it right for David Spade's weak hands. I don't think it happened. I think David Spade was just making a joke. Should we give a little context to those who haven't seen Grown Ups 2? Yeah, sure. So Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James, and David Spade are forced by some college kids to jump off a famous peak,

the quarry that overlooks the river called Suicide 35, which is 35 feet above the water, and they force them to do it naked. So we get this hilarious montage of our four comedy superstars jumping naked off of this thing, and we just see their asses. And Kevin James is kind of a big guy, and it's actually pretty funny

because David Spades got in the water just before him, and Kevin James is a pretty heavy guy. And he lands right on WC. Yeah. But he sustains, in this Looney Tunes universe, he sustains no lasting injuries. Even though, like, guaranteed concussion. All of the college kids are silent at the edge of the lake as their lives are changed forever. In a realistic version of that.

That's a trauma bond they take for the rest of their lives It started off like the good bit of Stand By Me But then it ended like the bad bit of Stand By Me I guess if you take a lot of the Looney Tunes Like I guess the physics of this movie There's a lot of dead people David Spade's dead The bus driver's dead multiple times

What would happen if you got rolled in a tyre Like David Spade did in real life? Well, it would go to mush, right? No, okay So this happened while we were watching it There was two scenes dead multiple times. What would happen if you got rolled in a tyre like David Spade did in real life? Well, head would go to mush, right? No. Okay, so this happened while we were watching it. There was two scenes. One was a tyre scene

and I can't remember what the other one was. I think when they were hanging the bus driver I know exactly what it'll be. It'll be when Nick Swanson, you're right,

he's the bus driver. It's specifically when he drops him and then he's on the floor and then he accelerates and his head just smacks into the back of the bus yeah i don't know he's very purple like his hands and like arms and face are

very purple yeah the blood is rushing to like there so the moment his face impacts the back of the bus like it's popping like a pimple right well the reason i bring up the tire and it wasn't that moment there was another moment in the film where my good friend Joel Zammett was like if they did that in real life they'd be dead and two out of the three examples not the bus example but the tire one definitely I was like oh no I've seen what would happen because they do this

exact stunt in Jackass the new one? the tire one is in the series I think but yeah like there's a couple of instances where you were like, oh no, that wouldn't work. And I was like, no, I've seen what it does to the human body. They spew heaps. Yeah.

I just feel like going that fast, like kind of, you know, would do something to your brain. Yeah. It would kill Shaquille O'Neal as well when he stops it with his wiener. Yeah. Oh yeah. Big time. Big time. Shaquille O'Neal is having so much fun in this movie.

Everyone seems to be having a lot of fun in this film. It's lovely. It's lovely to see. Shaquille O'Neal comes across as one of the stronger actors. I feel like he's excited by the opportunity, so he actually tries. Guy and I have watched all of the behind-the-scenes footage and promo interviews,

even stuff that didn't go to air anywhere. There's special places on the internet that we've found where it's like promo interviews that never got aired anywhere. And everyone raves about what a fucking good dude Shaq is, and that he's just hilarious, kind, great actor. A big part of Sandler's like, he has basketball hoops on all of his sets. Yeah. And like a huge part of, you know, it would be fun for Shaquille O'Neal to be in an Adam Sandler's like, he has basketball hoops on all of his sets. Yeah. And like a huge part of, you know, it would be fun for Shaquille O'Neal to be in an Adam Sandler movie.

More than that, it would be fun for Adam Sandler to play basketball with Shaquille O'Neal. All he wants to do is play basketball. It threatened this movie. There was a guy who was part of the production of Grown Ups 2 who got in touch with us during season one and told us that they were running like hideously behind schedule because Adam Sandler and the guys just kept playing basketball. They should have been like, shoot, they were fucking off all the time.

That's awesome. By all accounts, Adam Sandler sounds like the nicest man in Hollywood. Yeah. Big time. He's a great guy. I wish we were part of his circle, just to be involved in any of these films and have a lovely time with all these people. Do you think that we could just label our podcast as a Happy Madison production and just hope?

Yeah. Terrific. Surely he doesn't know everything within his empire. We can fly in under the radar. I've got a podcast. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I could have done that at some point. All right.

Put them in Grown Ups 3, sure. All right, yeah, yeah, that makes sense to me. All right, why not? Have I met him? I feel we've reached the point in the podcast where we probably should start hammering down into the economy of the Grown Ups 2. So talk us through the question. Why did you decide that this would be the question for the day?

I think I've got some theories how I'm but i'm curious yeah i'm curious as to what what what why you think the economy is is doesn't make so interesting well i think i'm with i mean i'll let tim and guy answer this because this was their idea for the question but watching it i was like straight away i was like oh yeah they're absolutely on here uh because no one goes to work at any point yeah that's not true we we see chris rock specifically go to work to not work that's what i'm that's what i'm fascinated by because when this sort of proposal got floated that we would do a mashup episode and we were looking for what question to kind of interrogate the movie with i was like the end at this point approaching the 60th watch the interesting bit for me is specifically how the economy of this town works yeah it's not like jobs don't exist that would

be way cleaner it would be like we could assume there was some sort of universal basic income program or or they're all rich living off some sort of stipend, whatever. But it's not like that. It's more complicated because jobs exist, and some of them have jobs. But Kevin James works in an auto body shop, which he visits for seemingly 20 minutes a day. I believe he, does he own it? Or is he a co-owner of it?

Yeah, it's his, I think it's his shop. Yeah, okay. David Spade works part-time at a go-kart track yeah we know adam sandler's job in this is never referenced and we only know because we've seen grown-ups do you know what it is mentioned and without wanting to get ahead of answering the question colin quinn when there's like a sort of a moment of harmony amongst the the townies as they're called by the frat boys uh says lenny fader left this town went to hollywood made big bucks probably more than all you boneheads were making your whole lives all put together

and then he came back that's true down to time and there's something to me because watching it i was like the interesting thing is it's they all have jobs but again it's sort of loony tune universe like a child interpretation of what a job is selma hayek owns a boutique fashion store where she goes her employee is incredibly unprofessional and harangues her about having dated her husband and she's like okay well you're in charge of the business i'm going to work her employee in the head yeah you actually you can't do that yeah it's actually not allowed it's uh i feel like at one point like uh she had easy grounds to fire that woman yeah then now the employee clearly has grounds to sue this shit yeah out of her employer by kicking initially in america yeah she's inviting trouble well i guess there is

yeah because we could probably go through the jobs that are in this film because one of adam sandler's kids works at an ice cream store for about 15 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got Salma Hayek runs the boutique clothing store. We've got the yoga instructor. Yeah, that's true. Yoga instructor, cleaning at the yoga instructor. Yeah, yeah. He's a janitor. That's right.

Although he seems to be cleaning multiple places. He seems to be a janitor. He's the town janitor. He's the only game in town. Because he's also clean. Sorry, the clown. The town is very clean. Well, yeah. He's doing a good job. He's also the janitor town. Yeah. Because he's also clean. Sorry, the clown. The town is very clean. Yeah.

Well, yeah. He's doing a good job. He's also the janitor at the school, remember? He's got them by the short and curly. Me, oh my, human resources wants to fire him, but boy, does he keep things spick and span. Hopefully he didn't do such a good job. You've got Kmart.

Yeah. Kmart is a big one. Steve Buscemi is a driving instructor. Yep. You've got a coffee shop that the bus driver crashes into and I assume

orders a coffee yeah bus driver bus driver obviously you should kill O'Neill you've got the police you've got the cops

we've got cops so we've got like a municipal sort of civil service structure going on people are paying taxes yeah yeah yeah it's happening

but how the fuck are they generating income yeah from like an ice cream shop there's a school so there's like a teacher yeah that's true that's true you've got the principal there that's a whole system But how the fuck are they generating income? Yeah. An ice cream shop. There's a school, so there's like a teacher. Yeah, that's true.

You've got the principal there. That's a whole system. You've also got a university that's quite close, I can only assume. Yeah, yeah, yeah. True. But is this a university town? Then on top of that, all of these jobs we see, apart from the cleaner who is clearly everywhere and doing an incredible job all the time yeah no one is actually doing their job yeah like oh i guess tim meadows at kmart seems to be working but then he also gets choked out on shift yeah yeah yeah an impediment to doing your job if anyone is working in this

movie they get stopped immediately there's like some sort of force where if someone is being which is okay so here's what i'm thinking right there is like some sort of force where if someone is being which is okay so here's what i'm thinking right there is like some sort of heavily socialist underpinning which sort of girdles the town so if anyone is starting to be productive in this economy they must be cut off at the knees if you start this cold war arms race of earning actual money and and forming a productive industry here suddenly we're all going to be doing nine to five five days a week and frankly that is not compatible with our lives that really changes the scene where chris rock doesn't go to work because it's it's i still look like it's he's lazy he's like i can't yeah fighting for his. He is a cable guy. He's a cable guy who we know just has one job for the entire day.

And that's not even a case where, like, with the other stuff, like Kevin James, we're sort of extrapolating that he's there for 20 minutes in the day at the shop. And with Kevin James, he owns the place too. So you can assume maybe it's employees that are actually doing the lion's share of the work. Well, yeah, because the very muscular, sexy lady lady she works for the uh yeah exactly so he's got people working for him yeah but chris rock we know his entire day like his schedule that day he's been booked to do one install job yeah yeah what it's not viable guys if i was a cable if i

was comcast yeah i'd get the fuck out of that town. Something weird's going on. Hey, see, I think. Yeah. So, because, again, when we're talking about, there's a scene just before the hilarious titans of comedy are jumping off a cliff naked. So there's that scene where the, I guess,

the frat boys are mocking these people. We do go through their jobs. Yeah. And one of them is like you know points to kevin james i think it's chris rock points to kevin james like he owns like one of the best uh auto repair shops this guy he works part-time in a go-kart but they they all very deliberately not mention what adam sandler does okay it's a really weird scene because they just kind of focus on adam sandler's face and nothing happens yeah and they don't really say anything and then of course they jump off naked hilarious yeah i wonder if they did that because that may have been a pickup or something it doesn't work if they say it's so funny because it's a movie that made 300 million us dollars and you're like maybe someone forgot to say it in that take.

No, I think that what happened is not that they forgot to say it, but just that they had the ending scene where they're like, he left this town and he came back to this town after making big Hollywood bucks. Joel, there's not supposed to be a reveal. Yeah, what are you talking about? That only works if no one has seen Grown Ups 1. It's not a twist.

No. It's because they're saying it to Taylor Lautner, who is also the same person who this speech is to before that. I think it would actually make more sense if it was addressed here and then later it would become a callback. He's like a big Hollywood big shot in the end. And he came back because of any whom. So they don't mention his name or they don't mention what his job is,

whatever, then they make him do the jump. So my theory is that we, because we don't really know how much Adam Sandler made when he was a big Hollywood superstar agent, whatever. But I think he made a lot of money. I'm thinking he made like billions. Like I think he's maybe like perhaps in the 1% as it were. And so I think he kind of came back to this town because we don't,

do we ever see, look, we haven't not seen Grown Ups 1. Do we ever see think he kind of came back to this town because we don't, do we ever see, look, we have not seen Grown Ups 1. No, yeah. Do we ever see the town before he came back? I'm going to assume it was a garbage town that no one cared about and was kind of like falling apart. The economy was just in the toilet.

So when he came in with all his billions and was like, I miss this town and what it used to be. Because you have this ice cream shop that isn't really like a modern day ice cream shop. That's true. It looks like an ice cream shop. It's vintage. Kind of like out of the 1950s or something like that.

So you're suggesting basically Adam Sandler is bankrolling the town. I think that everyone here understands the situation which is to make Adam Sandler, or whatever his name is, Larry Ender, I don't know. Yeah. Sure, sure. Lenny Fader. Sure.

Well, I guess I would kind of explain, if everybody's kind of like adam sandler is where my paycheck comes from then when david spade is tortured by being rolled down in a tire he's like well this is what i signed up for it's also why adam sandler thinks that he has i guess the you know the audacity to be like i'm gonna drive this bus and no one can do anything stop me even the cops don't give a shit. It's also a functional metaphor for the movie itself and the way that the economy of the actual

Happy Madison Productions runs. Yeah. I totally agree. The other question mark or the other, like I feel like anyone who's not a main character within the world of the film but still lives in the same town is employed by kmart and i feel like all of those people are earning an honest living like it's sort of came out appears

to be there are these specific stores you've got your fashion so you've got a supermarket what else you've got your auto body shop but like by and large and this is i've been to some small towns like a big store like Kmart moving in is basically death to mom and pop stores. And this is a place that would have previously been populated by all these little community stores and everyone's, you know, they've all got their family businesses, how they operate. I think between Kmart and Adam Sandler, everyone is taken care of and not everyone's happy. Well, I guess this is the question then, did Adam Sandler commission the Kmart?

I think the Kmart is a threat to Adam Sandler. I think he worries about it i think we don't see it in the movie but at night that's what he stresses about because he's like it's me versus the kmart in fact if grown-ups three was about that that would rule we've got a duopolistic economy that is just the two poles of it uh adam sandler's character lenny f which funds 50% of the economy in Kmart funding the half. I can understand the tension as well because the people who work at Kmart would resent everyone beneath Lenny's umbrella because you don't know anything about an honest day's work.

You don't do anything for your money. You just live off of your friend like a sponge. You're in this imagined weird 1950s pseudo dream of an ice cream store. But all of the people underneath adam sandler's umbrella would be like well that came up moved into town it put my mom and my dad out of business it shut down all of the locally owned and operated original stores and so you guys are in fact and there's there's grounds for you know you can see the value in either argument to me this feels like what's happening with the metaverse that we're all like in pretty quick order going to be living in this world which is like mark zuckerberg's fucked up version of earth and this

is like adam sandler's got like this is what the hometown was like there was an ice cream shop and there was a go-kart track and he's just funded all of these projects that people have to then exist in full time and that's what we're headed towards it's like I gotta go that would be so weird to be like I know I need to go to my place of work for a bit to satisfy Adam Sandler to be like

yeah they are good you are working you don't have to be that long you kind of see this a lot in a lot again you go back to that scene

where they're talking to the frat guys and there's almost you could kind of if you scored that a little bit differently to kind of have the fear in say Adam Sandler's friends to be like, guys, shut the fuck up.

You're going to ruin a good thing. You don't know what's going on here. So please be quiet. They're seconds away from leading it and being like, Adam Sandler runs this town. If you mention something, we're going to ruin it. And then we're going to have to deal with our lives. And if you look at every single one of them and how they occupy their time a lot of it is to go around and help adam sandler yeah yeah you got like like a horny david spade being like i'm fucking around and just doing everything i guess i go to this

there's a truman show quality to it yeah like when they go to the ballet recital and it's full of all these people and you're like who found all these people yeah why are all these people in the auditorium to watch this ballet recital? And there's someone, it's probably someone close to him. It might be Laminsof between visits to like his mom's and the auto body shop. He's like in charge of the accounts and he's like hiring all of these people. He's bringing them on buses and he's putting them in a hall. And he's like, Sandler's going to get here in five minutes.

I've held him up with this big police fucking firing bus entrance from Kmart, but we need everyone sitting in here pronto. He's got to see that the town's popping off. Yeah, 100%. They're like, we need someone. We need a big-titted instructor there to keep Adam Sandler happy. Can't have it. And, yeah, it just seems everything there is for his benefit yeah

let's extrapolate this out a little bit yeah is this like is this how adam sandler is living do you think because he really he is for a lot of people they rely on him creating these movies sort of annually to keep their families fed boom operators gaffers assistant directors you know all these he's got this whole infrastructure, which is like a small town that moves around with him, shooting out these location movies because he feels like a real Asian happy Madison on screen. Well, wasn't there actually an issue?

Well, I guess an issue. Wasn't there a thing behind the scenes with this? Because Rob Schneider was cut from Grown Ups 2, but wasn't there a whole thing where he was like... There was a scheduling conflict. Yeah, scheduling conflict that was it it was like no bad but i was like ah scheduling conflict and my wife is having a kid so i can't be in this i remember it must have been something else then because i remember rob schneider being like i'm financially in trouble now or something like that and i was like adam sandler cut him out that's

going poor well umous way to live. So what I tend to do when I'm watching a movie I either really like or don't care for, I'll just go on IMDb and read the trivia. And so for the first one,

at the end of Making Grown Ups, and I guess it made a shit ton of money because Adam Sandler then gifted all the cast members, the main cast members,

Maseratis. Yeah. And I think it was Chris Rock was just like, I felt a little bit annoyed because I felt like I was Adam Sandler's bitch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I just feel that maybe everyone is like, and again, the town is a metaphor for Adam Sandler's relationship

for everyone else. Everyone is just like doing what he wants. And it's like, you know, it's nice. You don't have to go to work, but occasionally you'll be rolled into Shaquille O'Neal's penis in a tire and you've just got to figure out whether or not that's a deal you want to strike. It's a really interesting question about the price you put on your own dignity. Because it's like we're going to afford you so much freedom

that 23 hours of the day are all yours to live out as you choose within this protective bubble where you don't have to worry about anything yeah however for one hour a day we're gonna need you to get to the school hall because adam's on his fucking way and we need you fill in those seats it's yeah i i can actually feel within myself like a very dark stirring about the malaise that long-term living in this situation would put you in just the idea of like is this communism um and another i guess supporting argument here is the fact that so the the party at the end the 80s party at the end so that was um on a whim yeah it was not planned

that's right no there's no invitation and sent. Like everyone. It was the biggest party in the world. It was just an idea. It was organized at the start of the day. I also like to think that everyone had costumes. I like to think this explains why there were so many people dressed as prince. It was just like a miscommunication. There was more panic. There was meant to be one prince.

What are you doing? You're going to ruin the illusion. What is the communication network between everyone who is an Adam Sandler and his family? Because you're right, this is spread purely through word of mouth. It's a whisper network. All of a sudden, some of Lenny's old friends from the Jay Giles band are showing up.

They've installed a stage and speakers and a light show for them to play centerfold. It's all like, yeah, this is. Shit happens fast in this town when tim meadows gets choked out and then everyone comes out and then there's shack there who's like oh you strangled my brother how does he know so quickly well presumably the police got called well yeah but it's like a split second and they're not really the trick is and i think this is for the support of the argument they're not really police officers. There aren't actually cops in this town.

There are two guys who are dressed up like police officers. And they do point a live gun. Adam Sandler dressed up two guys like cops and we're like, do what you like. Those guns are going off, which I assume because no one gets actually shot. They're just full of blanks. It's full of blanks. Maybe there's a secret police we don't see

but they're just oh god well now we are talking commune with secret police and tie the what i love in retrospect i didn't figure this out at the time is the censors deemed it appropriate to remove like the teacher ball kids looking at the testicles joke however the bit where peter dante says the peter dante who sold your parents snowmobile and sold it for crack cocaine is gone. They kept it. That's cool. Also, all of Nick Swanson's sort of gay, panicky sort of storyline, that's all in there.

The kids need to see that. Yeah, that's important. Yeah, that's good. Making out with a dog is good, maybe. It's so... Maybe it is. It it does the way that like the mood so there's one thing i want to talk about uh about the ending of the film and the messaging of the film yeah uh that is very very strange but just going back to the gay panicky stuff real quick this movie handles that stuff so

weird because with nick swartz and they're like what a freak yeah but then with the yoga teacher they're like it's very normal this is a very normal thing yep who cares he's truman in this movie to be like he that was what radiated from the screen this time i was like the guy yeah the the yoga instructor is the one sane man yeah i you know excuse the turn of phrase but he's playing the whole thing straight yeah yeah straight man in this crazy world around his the way that that yoga class or whatever it is runs is so crazy which like you know obviously there's a weird moment with the janitor before where john lovitz comes in and makes everyone good it's genuinely still so funny yeah john lovitz rocks john lovitz is that much john lovitz in a movie is honestly incredible. It's delightful. It's weird.

All of these people have come, like all of these women have come in for this class. Yeah. And none of them are talking about the fact that it's a new class or it's a new constructor. They're all just there, like this is something we do. And then the instructor comes in and is like, hi, and no one's met him.

No one knows who this guy is. He's like, this is a new course. I'm a new guy. This does go to the adam sandler owns the town theory though because it's like now i'm imagining there's a notice board and it's like today's activities you could go to a yoga class or learn parasailing i like as well that if if adam sandler's hired the yoga instructor he's like it feels like he's getting too deep he's like i need a guy for my wife to find very attractive but she gotta be gay yeah i'm too threatened yeah but also he better be there's a point in the movie

where he doesn't know he's gay so adam said i think adam sandler's losing track of what's real and what isn't yeah again another argument for this being basically everyone at adam sandler's whim is props yeah so that little monkey that gets ripped to shreds by a deer. This instructor somehow, just by sewing magic, sews it up like it's brand new. And if you look at that stuffed animal, it doesn't got like shitty... No, it's a brand new monkey. It's a brand new monkey that they've tracked down.

You can bet they've got a warehouse full of those fucking monkeys. Someone in production has to track down that and be like, say you sewed this because we've got a great third act finale we've paid an actor to lose his nuts it's gonna be great there's there's a scene i really want to see with the yoga instructor which is when when higgins is it's a deleted scene yeah higgins is rolling through town they roll past selma hayek's boutique business store and outside of it she's standing there with i don't know if which kids but i know that she's with becky their daughter because the yoga instructor's standing outside like a new sort of louder shirt and becky's on his shoulders yeah and

it's like it's seen it's part of the world like becky and him know each other later on when the supermarket she calls him stud muffin like there is a whole scene of him bonding with the family yeah shopping with the family yeah like doing all the stuff that they're like we don't need it and the idea of any scene in this movie being like we don't need it when you don't need any of them like how do they make those decisions what's the distinction so adam sandler running the town the movie because the the messaging of this movie goes against usually what these exact type of movies are because what happens in this film is that people that are aging so they're all in their presumably 40s yeah yeah early 50s maybe usually what happens in movies like this it's like it's okay that you're losing your youth yeah but this movie takes the opposite stance which is nostalgia is

fucking awesome kids are fucked uh and like living in the 80s fucking rules and adults will always run this fucking town and live in the past relive your past glories it's still awesome if you peaked in high school don't worry that's actually still cool that's's sick. Also, in terms of more Adam Sandler fuckery, so he tells his kid how, like, this is how you pick up, you know, this is the mood. The three steps, yeah. You've got to get them smiling, say they've got a sweet smile, and then you've got to ask them on a date.

Before they realize you're fugly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you see this with his kid doing that, but the kid is at his 1950s ice uh ice cream parlor yeah and his old i guess adam sandler's old friend is you know his boss and he's also quinn he's mentoring his kid to kind of be like the next adam sandler oh no because he's saying your dad did this and it worked on your like you know your mom basically he's like somebody's gonna need to keep running the town and maybe my wife and then he hits another kid with uh something no then he he brains a woman who works

in the ice cream parlor with a scoop yeah her name's tanya by the way stunt actors yeah yeah no she's not she was a yoga instructor who got roped in for a day on set we met her in los angeles we met her we we uh we had a real real journey trying to figure out who this woman was and eventually figured it out, met her. She's super lovely. That's like the one movie she's ever done. Which is like, and this speaks to the let's zoom out of grown-ups too, but in real life, like Happy Madison Productions,

she just, her dad was like friends with someone and she wound up in the movie. And I think that's most Adam Sandler-less. We joked earlier about tricking Adam Sandler into thinking we were part of Happy Madison Productions. But I feel like if we were just, you got to get on set and then you're in the movie. I feel like that's all you need to do.

Adam Sandler, I know that Grown Ups 3 was greenlit and I know that your production was halted and it still hasn't come out. There is still time to cast all five of us. You know, if you want to that your production was halted and it still hasn't come out. There is still time to cast all five of us. You know, if you want to bring your production to New Zealand and also then Melbourne, I'm sure there's some tax breaks there. This is not the way. Ask forgiveness, not permission. If we find out where it is being shot, I think we just all turn up holding booms.

No one will question us. And then we just drift our way into frame when they're shooting. Wait until there's a scene with five people, five people, five booms no one will question us and then we just drift our way into frame when they're shooting wait with five people five people five booms we're in do you think if you lived in this town this adam sandler town you would be getting worried like i feel like what we're seeing is the point where adam sandler's sort of losing his mind like previously we're seeing a town where adam sandler's trying to recapture the nostalgia of his childhood and he's like this is we're gonna open a 1950s ice cream shop but now he's i'm sorry to interrupt you but do you think there's a good point in the town being dictated by one man i think that would have been a sweet spot while everyone was like i don't have to work

i get a basic income from adam sandler but now like we're at a point where adam sandler the night before is is like, let a deer into my home to piss on my son. And then he goes to sleep. And everybody who works at the production is like, he's losing it. He's like, later on, we're going to fight some children. And you're like,

I don't know how much longer I can sustain this in Adam Sandler's maniac town. Because you've got to imagine, before it first all kicked off, it would have been like, you know, middle of America, just, you know, whole town falling apart, there's just no money to make it, you know, to do basic repairs or beautification.

And then this guy comes in, cock of the walk, and he's like, I got this idea, I will reinvigorate this whole town, but I own you. And you're like, well, what do you mean by that? But at first, maybe it's a fine deal. At first, maybe you don't mind doing it. It's kind of like a serfdom. Yeah, exactly.

You're like, Adam Sandler is my king. And I just got to till the fields. Those fields are kind of... Entertaining Adam Sandler, yeah. It's a Jeff Bezos sort of approach to capitalism. What do you guys think was the original industry that was sort of the backbone of this town when it actually existed legitimately well it feels like that what may have probably happened is based on the buildings and stuff that we've seen apart from the kmart everything

is and the movie sort of makes a point of it is that the town and i think that this is probably more heavily in the first grown-ups although i remember grown-ups one being set in a cabin but i could be misremembering yeah that's right that's right that's right yeah fuck yeah i got a lake somewhere on holiday well done cancel going to milan yeah fuck yeah fuck yeah that's legend stuff bro yeah wow dude i'm i'm actually fucking on one right now joel i feel like you were going something with that what is the architecture telling us yeah oh yeah so the way that the town is is like it's very much like since adam sandal left the town kind of stayed the same and got like kind of decrepit like the fact the ice cream shop it's not that reopened it's just the same one that he used to go to as a kid sure you've got

like a lot of things like even just like repair shops and stuff like that as things he remember like because like it's just things how like everything kind of just stayed the same yeah except for kmart that's true kmart feels new yeah yeah so i guess the town was probably like an old like uh is it a mining town that logging dried up logging a quarry what's in a quarry stone there's a lot of brick i don't know what that's telling us, but there's a lot, like, right? Yeah. It feels like a lot of the buildings are brick when they're in the exteriors. In my head, I remember a lot of weatherboard.

Oh, interesting. I feel like they probably, there's a train station. I feel like it was maybe a gateway town. You have a lot of people through, a lot of people coming to visit. Maybe cold's going through there. Or maybe there's a train station and the weather seems nice maybe it was kind of like a tourist destination yeah yeah yeah it could be like an old like sort of in in you know australia where we have like those old gold rush towns oh yeah true true true kind of built up there and then like you know over time no one really gives a shit yeah yeah. It seems like you really want it to be a mining town,

but I think unfortunately, based on the amount of greenery and stuff we see, it's probably not. Where they jump? Is that a quarry? Is that a flooded quarry? That was a quarry. Oh, yeah, that's true.

I don't understand quarries. What's a quarry? A quarry is like a mine. Okay. It's like a mine you don't go in. You just go on. Jackson. Check out on big brain on Jackson faces at each other now which is

not gonna get picked up on a podcast but we're having fun well yeah I mean okay so there's a quarry yeah it seems like it could probably be a college town too which I know you said towards the start of the episode. Well, I think that depends, and I was going to ask this question.

Are the college kids in on it? Or is the college separate, and they found this horrible little- The college, it is suggested, is sort of within the greater vicinity of the sort of catchment of the town, but they had to travel in to sort of get to where the grown-ups hang out. I am on board for the mining thing. I think the quarry is like our one great

clue here. That combined with the rail infrastructure, this makes perfect sense to me. So we initially, we had mineral resources, maybe gold. It went to shit, which has happened. We've spent a little bit of time in Kentucky and West Virginia in the States, Guy and I. We've spent a little bit of time in Kentucky and West Virginia in the States going on.

We've seen firsthand the devastating effects of- Happens all the time. Absolutely. When the ass falls out of these places, it's terrible. Drugs come in and ruin society. Thank God for Adam Sandler. Yeah. He would have seemed like a godsend when he first arrived.

Here's a guy who left the town, so already there's bitterness that he's gone. But he comes back, and he comes back pockets deep. He says, hey, let me buy your town. Everybody's like, well... What does that mean, but okay. All right. Okay. And he's like, now entertain me as kind of like a gesture.

This is my call. See, I think that starts slowly. Adam Sandler, here's what I imagine. Say I work at, I don't know, the service station. I'm at the 7-Eleven. But Adam Sandler likes hanging out with me. At first, I'm just working at the service station. But then one day he arrives and he's like, hey, let's go ride go-karts or whatever.

And I'm like, well, I got a job. And he's like, that's fine. You can just leave it. Then slowly I leave it more and more. And then I have to only go there five minutes a day. Then not at all. But it doesn't matter because everybody's getting paid you know what adam i feel like adam sandler would not like you know and this this holds true in the movie is it's like your boss at the service station be like hey if you're not going to show up that's fine but you

don't work anymore yeah but no you don't understand like a big part of the appeal for adam is that i still work here i'm gonna come in in uniform and do like five minutes you don't you know like you don't have to pay me i'm not on the payroll but it's just so important we keep this going what about what about this though it's like your options are you go and do your um job i'm doing air quotes you can't catch it in an audio yeah yeah oh you could if I said it like this. Your job. That's true. Nailed it. Or you're hanging out with Adam Sandler.

That's your life in the town. So the elasticity of the hours that you work are inversely proportionate to your proximity to Adam Sandler. If you are close to Adam Sandler, you do not have to spend really any time at all at your job. But if you are far away from Adam Sandler's social circle, you must be at your place of work. It sounds so scary to be in his inner circle and just be like on call or whatever. I'd rather do the job. I'd rather work at Kmart. Me too.

I would pick Kmart as well. This is scary. Well, you mentioned that, yeah, all these towns, the bottom falls out and a lot of people go to drugs and that kind of stuff but if you look at some of the adults who do have like the jobs in this uh town a lot of them seem that they were maybe drug fucked yeah yeah so i'm thinking of maybe you've got like three examples here you've got the bus driver who's clearly like i think adam sandler was so entertained by how he was pre adam sandler coming in he's like you could stay on drugs but he seems the kind of guy who pre-Adam Sandler coming in he's like, you can stay on drugs but he seems the kind of guy who's

addled because he's had years of abuse and this is maybe his recovering, but the damage has been done you then have perhaps John Lovitz, who I think is definitely a reformed criminal of some kind, and then also the principal of some kind, the guy is clearly

a pervert, He is convicted for sexual crimes. And the word reformed is also pretty generous. The drugs he was addicted to? Yeah, pervert pills. And then, yes, the principle clearly seemed like maybe had connections

to the mob at one point. And it also beautifully explains the incompetence of the people who aren't within Adam Sandler's inner circle. If Adam Sandler just lined up everyone in town and was like janitor, principal,

yoga instructor, bus driver, cop, cop. Is anyone who has a job doing the job well? No. The ice cream store guy makes, oh no,

because ice cream store guy also gets tricked into making it look like he's taking a big shit. I cannot get past the Adam Sandler job lottery. At the start of some, you'll just line up and he just walks along and he points at different people and tells them what they're going to be doing his version of for the fucking next three months.

I would say that Peter Dante does a good, like he takes his job as a cop really seriously. But then I did have a flash of that genuinely comedic moment in the movie where the fight has started to break out at the party and Adam Sandler's wife says, somebody call the police and get out of the crowd. Peter Dante's wearing nothing but skis, a Speedo and a foam dome that's got like eight cans of beer around his head and says, we're already here. He knows how ridiculous it is to even imagine him as a real police officer a lot

of them understand what this like uh town is yeah it's when he says we're already here it's sarcastic yeah oh yeah we're already here yeah like the college students the beautiful lonely island uh who are just kind of like gyrating on a car clearly that feels also like maybe that's a great gag that adam sandler wanted to play on one of his good friends. So I feel even that is- When Kevin James' wife is like, I didn't expect this, she means like it wasn't on the itinerary. No, I think it was on the itinerary.

Because she's like, I didn't expect this. Big smile and a wink. But Adam called up, or Larry, whatever his name was, called up and was like, I got a great joke. As Kevin James watches balls squish against his window, he's like, this is what I'm paid for. That was the best acting Kevin James did in the whole movie was when he got to pretend to be actually homophobic. Did that scene make it into the Netflix cut?

Yeah, great question. Yes, although I've got a weird feeling it was shorter. Yeah, it felt like it really blew by. When it was brought up, I was like a weird feeling it was shorter. Yeah, it felt like it really blew by. When it was brought up, just then I was like, was that in there? It was in there. There's definitely, yes, the joke and stuff is in there.

You get that shot of them walking towards the car, but in the cut that Guy and I are used to, it's probably you saw. Yeah, there's a lot of body parts being squished against windows and stuff. And another funny reveal with that scene, which, again, it is worth probably noting the jokes

that do land in this movie. Because you can cover them in one podcast. Cutting to the fact that the driving instructor and the kid are the other car. Funny. That's funny. That's good. That's good time. Good stuff.

I also think, again, if you look at this where some people may have lost themselves in the role a little bit too much. There's the scene where they go in the supermarket. And this is, I think, where Adam Sandler is like, I'm going to have this great confrontation with who I think my wife is crushing on, the yoga instructor. And so he wants to have this conversation, this scripted conversation that he wants to have there.

But then the woman who is just obsessed with him comes in and I feel that bit, she's lost herself in the role. And Adam Sandler doesn't like this. See, I don't know, I'm still firmly of the belief that Adam Sandler has lost himself in the role. Adam Sandler's really struggling in this movie to tell the difference between reality and his own created fiction. I have a theory that this scene, I think, very heavily implies,

which is that Adam Sandler bought the town, but it was never his intention for it to become Adam Sandlerville. But the town, as time goes by, is so scared he's going to leave. So they are secretly coming together to make sure that everything... We can't have him leave. He needs to have... They're the secret police. Yeah, the whole town.

And this is why there can be no such thing as a benevolent dictator. Because even when the dictator has the best of intentions and doesn't want to mess with anything the mere fact that that much power is centralized to a focal point changes the behavior of everyone in it yeah because that scene in the supermarket where there's i mean that's also a pretty good scene where he's trying to have the confrontation with a yoga instructor but then you've also got girlfriend from sixth grade coming in and like there's so much conflict and adam sandler's like yeah i have no idea what's happening but none of this seems good for me so let's go yeah yeah yeah he checks out of that also

something that has no payoff because it seems like the summer hire with the person that dated Adam Sandler in sixth grade is like, you're delusional. But then she eats the note as if to be like, don't even think about it. But Adam Sandler's like, I don't know what's going on. What does this note mean? And then there's no payoff for that. Well, she kicks her in the head.

Yeah, she kicks her in the head. Yeah, that's true. She does kick her in the head. It's also very telling that his child's driving instructor and his wife's assistant are married. Yeah. That's just very like, I don't know, two people close to my family connect them up.

I can't stop thinking, and forgive me for not remembering their names, the bold family that keep going, What? Imagine that if that's Adam Sandler's choice. I want this family to behave like this. You as the dad have to be like, I'm sorry, son, you're going to have to say this horrible catchphrase.

There's nothing we can do about it. I want to make it really clear for the people listening that literally in the movie Grown Ups 2, there are three characters who are in one family and they try to get the word what across the line as a catchphrase. They're trying to float that as like a let's get it on merch catchphrase in the film. It is fucking insane.

I feel like they're really close to Adam Sandler and they've started phoning it in. They're like, I'm actually running out of ways to engage with him when he comes along. What? How small can I make it? What can I reduce it to that is's still serviceable and adam sandler so discombobulated by what's happening that every time like what he's like well that is what they

say that's what i pay him for i pay him for that that does like you know callbacks to that like nostalgic era where like catchphrases were just a huge yeah of media and so that could just be things of being like that that's what I want. I miss this. I miss when this happened. Do the what? Do the what? Do the what?

Make your wife do the what? I am totally blown away by where we got to. Yeah. It's unexpected. I really, I honestly, I feel like we stumbled into a theory that holds water that actually stands up to scrutiny. Yeah. Like there's a real sense of pride, I feel.

I'm feeling very proud of Guy. We don't often feel that after an episode. Yeah, it's rare for us to come to what you might call a, what the layman would call a conclusion. Yeah. I think we should be proud of ourselves today for what we achieved. Well, I think, yeah, Adam Sandler might be in charge.

I think I'm going around to more the JD theory, which is like Adam Sandler injected this town with a lot of money, and the town are being like, I guess he is our king, and we need to service him, unbeknownst to him. And I think in many ways that still remains a consummate metaphor for what's happening in Happy Madison Productions, where

Adam Sandler, despite he is responsible for all these people, but also these people are sort of responsible for it. I think it still works. I think it's still an effective metaphor. Yeah, yeah. No one's going to tell Adam Sandler in the town,

no, I don't want to do that, because they fear the implications. Yeah, and Adam Sandler could never stop because all of these people rely on him so heavily. You know, it's a kind of horrible catch-22. Yeah, it really is. And sometimes in the same way, Happy Madison and in the town,

sometimes he goes on holiday. Like he gets shoulder tapped to go and do something of interest, which is like he leaves the town to go on a holiday and experience what life's like as an actual person. Goes to Hawaii. Yeah. Meets a girl who's got amnesia. Dates her.

Marries her. Go and work with the Safdie brothers in New York on a diamond movie. That's right. Get involved in the diamond trade. Get addicted to gambling. Run up some debts. Yeah. Shot in the head.

Dies. Fine again. Well, it must be nice living in the town when this Adam Sandler does go on an actual holiday. Because I feel like it might be a nice break. Quick question around the horn, if I may. Please. I feel like we might be a nice break. Quick question around the horn, if I may. Please. I feel like we're closing things up. Who would rather work in the construct of Grown Ups 2 for Kmart

and who for Adam Sandler, with all we know? I am very much team Adam Sandler. It means that not only is my life chaos all the time, I'm sort of also getting to live a second teenage dream of mine, which is to be a member of the Jackass crew. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. I feel like that's two birds, one stone for me.

As close to Adam Sandler as possible. Make me... Part of that crew. I'm definitely Team Sandman. Sometimes I don't like decisions, so I feel this would smooth out my brain somewhat, and I'm kind of at their whimsy. I think I would pick living close to Adam Sandler

because I think the most appropriate place for me at any point in history would have been a medieval jester being like, spitting me eye, my lord. So I think that's basically, I would slot right in. Jackson, truly a cuck for the ages. Oh yeah, we have no dignity. There's so many things we would do for cash. Were you selfish?

I'm blown away by that. I think I'd have to work at Kmart, and I know that the hours are harder, and I know it's a more challenging craft, but to me, the freedom of power, of movement, knowing where my daytime and nighttime hours are, and just being in proximity to the Sandler Circus and being like, I don't think it would be difficult to,

I think it wouldn't be difficult to get in. I think it looks pretty fucking tough to get out. I think you've made your sandler beds there boys yeah and um i'm just going to look at you from behind the gun shelf at kmart and say godspeed better you than me yeah i'm 100 with guy as well i'm team came out all the way and it's like it's an interesting thing because it's um autonomy is so important to me and literally i think i would be working way more hours at the Kmart, but it's just that sense of, like,

I feel like I am in control of my own destiny at Kmart. Am I earning minimum wage? Yes. But no one can yank me out to go to a recital on the turn of a dime. I think if Adam Sandler woke me up at 2am and was like, you've got to put lobsters down your pants, have them bite your balls, I'd be like, this is where I'm meant to be. Yeah. I'd be like, yes, thank you for making this decision for me, Adam.

I don't need to make these decisions. I will. A dream of, I think, both myself and Jack is to one day be controlled by like Remy the Rat situation. Yeah, a Ratatouille situation. It's basically sweet paradise for the both of us. Just to be a big fleshy mech for Adam Sandler would kind of be a dream come true.

Do what you want, Adam. Let me be your meat, Jester. I just think that subservience is really where I need to be. The podcast is going somewhere else. You guys do merch, because put that on a TV. Make you a fleshy mech

for Adam Sandler. I'd just like to say that whilst I am team working for Adam, I'm there for the chaos of it. I do, I do enjoy making choices and the idea of being so subservient.

That isn't me. I don't know what that means. But I do, I am leaning also, like, because Kmart also seems chaotic because like, I guess most of your job

is just cleaning up broths that have been activated in this game. Most of your job is dealing with Adam Sandler's yeah yeah yeah you lose a lot of agency because basically the main people are coming to Adam and his cronies and you are powerless to stop them from doing anything. All of you have forgotten that Nick Swardson puts a real human turd into the display toilet when they're in there. Nick Swanson puts a real human turd into the display toy. Oh, yeah. And they're in there. Yeah, he does.

You think you're out. You're not out. You can work at Kmart all you like. That's the trick. Even if you work for Kmart, you're working for Adam Sandler. You'll have lobsters on your balls and you won't even be getting paid for it. You're at the party. You're in the fight.

You're also at the recital if you're Tim Meadows, who is the only person we see working at Kmart. At least we understand the value of money. You don't get paid in dollars. Everything is free. You have no idea what a life actually is like. You don't know what a life is actually like because you haven't been inside a tire rolling down a hill.

You don't know. You've never lived. Even in this thought exercise, there is a separation between those of us who work at Kmart and those of us who are under the Sandler umbrella, and this is what they want. You don't know what it feels like with a tire just slamming into your nuts at 200 miles an hour.

You don't know that beautiful pain. You haven't lived until you've potentially experienced what your last moments of life of Earth could be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We could die at any moment. Life is valuable to the Adamson. You've never been strung up by your feet on a bus for three hours. You don't know what that's like.

Zillow rating. I actually, I'll join Guy in that. I think that all of this can be summed up by the beautiful lyrics of REO Speedwagon, which are the first words we hear as the credits roll. Live every moment, love every day because before you know it your precious time slips

away. It's a message for all of us. That's true. That is something that I think no matter if you're Team K-Mart or Team Sandman that is something that you should absolutely take away from this episode. It's something we can all get behind Yeah Yeah

Have that tattooed Across your chest Yeah And on that note I've been Joel I've also been Joel I've been Jackson And I've been Guy

I've been Tim Kmart Bad We have been Plumbing the Death Star And We have been The worst idea

Of all time Anyone wanna Should we plug any oh yeah because this is coming out during the Melbourne Comedy Festival if that's true, buy a ticket come watch Guy Montgomery do stand up comedy, I do not mention Grown Ups 2

once and if you are coming for us, yeah go see Guy Montgomery's show,ickets will be available now. Links in the show notes, I believe. I also believe that we're plugging the entire festival, so if you're

in Melbourne or you can get to Melbourne, go to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Buy tickets. Buy every ticket imaginable. Anytime there's a deal, snap those tickets up. Tight-ass Tuesdays? Oh, you better believe we're going on a Tuesday. You guys know what they're talking about.

Important that you do buy tickets to Guy's show first. But then with all that extra money, which we know you've all got, podcast listeners. Stimulate Melbourne's economy and the comedy scene by going to buy Guy Montgomery's comedy show. What was the title of that show once again? Guy Montgomery by name, Guy Montgomery by nature. Yes.

Remember that. So it's Guy Montgomery by name, Guy Montgomery by nature. Buy tickets now. If you can't make it, it's fine. Buy tickets. Guy loves performing to a half-empty room, provided that he knows it's in theory sold out. Are you not from Australia?

Can you not get to Melbourne? If you are right now living in the US or the UK or somewhere where you can't quite travel, if you don't even have a passport, it's fine. Go on to the Minkoff website and just search for Guy Montgomery and buy those tickets. I've changed my mind. The show's off. This has been Plumbing the Death Star, worst idea of all time.

Thank you so much for listening. And yeah, subscribe to both of our podcasts. I'm hitting stop right there. There's such a strangely menacing tone for that. Do you want more of this bullshit but don't want the commitment of Sandspans Plus? I get it. Too many shows, a good chunk of them are D&D, and I don't know if you know this, but that shit is for nerds.

And RSS feeds are confusing as all hell. So we've teamed up with ACARS to provide a plumbing sampler. For five US bucks a month, you get a monthly bonus episode not available on the regular feed, as well as our monthly What If show that was, until now, only available to Sandspant's Kings. That's two extra episodes a month, an increase of 50% more bullshit. You also get episodes without any dynamic ad insertions and the undying gratitude of one of the hosts of your choice. Just head to plus.acast.com slash s slash plumbing the death star. Or there's a link in the show notes, which will be a lot easier to navigate. Once again, that URL I just sent.