For the past couple of years, Adam Sandler has been taking risks. Despite an entire career built on getting teenage boys into movie theaters with juvenile and scatological humor, he’s deviated from that course and done his best to ignore his base recently, investing the time and money of his production studio Happy Madison into the gender-bending Jack and Jill (which set a record by winning more Golden Raspberry “Worst of” awards than Battlefield Earth) and the R-rated That’s My Boy, which pleased positively no-one and stopped Andy Samberg’s movie career faster than Jimmy Fallon’s. Sure, Sandler’s taken risks before in more dramatic fare such as Punch Drunk Love and Funny People, but it’s a natural progression for a veteran comedian to take on more serious material – just look at Bill Murray in Lost in Translation or Ben Stiller in Greenberg. Sandler has never particularly impressed critics; it's been fans who've have been supporting his work, and unfortunately he took them for a bit of a joy ride the last few times out. Yes, he did have some success with Hotel Transylvania, but with an animated kids’ film it’s easy to garner a pass.Of course, Sandler might not have had the courage to deviate from his usual routine had it not been for Grown Ups, an ensemble piece also starring fellow comedians Kevin James, David Spade, Chris Rock and Rob Schneider, that became his biggest-ever box office smash. Success for anybody can be confusing, and obviously the man who made The Waterboy a hit took it as a license to go even crazier. However, when the audiences failed to materialize, the solution was simple: a sequel (in fact his first actual sequel) imaginatively called Grown Ups 2. This time around, Sandler brought back Happy Madison’s entire starting lineup (excluding Schneider) and added whomever he thought the film might need to spice things up a bit (including ex-NBA player Shaquille O’Neal and former werewolf Taylor Lautner). This project doesn’t just make sense for Sandler; for James, Rock and Spade, whose careers peaked years ago, this film is the best way to remain relevant when projects like The Zookeeper and What to Expect When You’re Expecting aren’t really setting the world ablaze. Still, paychecks can only carry you so far, and with the way Grown Ups 2 fails on every level, you have to imagine that most of the major actors involved should want to take a step back from Sandler in the near future.That’s because Grown Ups 2 doesn’t even have a cohesive story; the script is essentially a gaggle of rejected Saturday Night Live skits stitched around the idea of Hollywood agent Lenny Feder (Sandler) having returned to his Massachusetts hometown with his family. Each scene focuses on everybody’s problems. Lenny’s wife Roxie (Salma Hayek) wants another child. Eric (Kevin James) is worried because his son is terrible at basic math and might be mentally deficient. Kurt (Chris Rock) has one son taking a driving test, and a daughter going on her first date. And ladies’ man Higgy (David Spade) discovers he has an illegitimate son who is coming to live with him for the summer. And if that doesn’t seem like enough to fill one movie (as Sandler and director Dennis Dugan obviously believed), then there’s tons of side characters – many played by Sandler’s SNL running buddies Tim Meadows, Colin Quinn, Cheri Oteri and Ellen Cleghorne – and secondary and tertiary plots that never quite mesh and that you are expected to believe all takes place in one day. While the style might be an effort to keep your mind engrossed, the bathroom humor does little more than gross you out.Which I wouldn’t have a problem with if Grown Ups 2 wasn’t so lazily conceived and implemented. This is mostly thanks to Dugan, a director who has already won a Golden Raspberry for Worst Director and was nominated for two more, all based on his work with Sandler. He’ll likely be due for another when the year is done, thanks to this sophomoric mess that never gels into telling a story. Every single character seems to have their own sub-plot, which would be fine if the movie had any sense of scene-to-scene buildup or the ability to delay the resolve of some threads. Instead, these minor stories are ended almost instantly, and in predictable fashion, while other shouldn’t have been introduced at all. The fact that Dugan couldn’t bear to remove unnecessary scenes (which admittedly would have turned this into a half-hour television special) is indicative of just how reliant he is on Sandler’s goodwill. After all, if he weren’t Sandler’s buddy, it’s obvious he’d have a difficult time finding work in Hollywood.But even shoehorning every possible story into the plot wouldn’t be a problem if the film had been as gut-busting funny as other adult comedic fare such as This is the End. Instead, what we get is the same deer pee joke twice in the first five minutes, relentless puke and poop jokes for another ninety, and barely a laugh in-between… assuming you’re not pre-gaming for the show. None of the four leading men inspire much amusement, and the rotating cast of charity-case guest stars are even worse, between Oteri’s Lenny-obsessed wannabe adulteress, Meadows’ one-note joke of a character, Nick Swardson’s ridiculous “why-is-he-here” casting, and Jon Lovitz’s even more mystifying and random appearances. An entire crew of former SNL (this seems to be a theme) male stars even appear as a cheerleader carwash crew, much to the chagrin of Kevin James and the rest of us as well. Loaded by pack upon pack of poor and pedantic choices, dialogue and casting, Grown-Ups 2 is about as un-funny as it gets.But even the execrable Movie 43 had some redeeming moments, and even while making that farce look like a Shakespeare performance, Sandler’s latest effort gets some things right. Mostly, it’s in cast members overcoming the limits of their dialogue through sheer talent, such as Steve Buscemi dressed up as Flava Flav or Higgy’s angry, tattooed son being played with gusto by The Hunger Games’ Alexander Ludwig. And the man known as Shaq officially becomes the O.J. Simpson (circa Naked Gun) of former athletes turned small-role actor. Arguably best of all are Taylor Lautner and a gaggle of other young actors as possibly the dumbest frat boys in existence, who make it their mission (again, for a day) to torment the older men in the town. In one hilarious scene (the naked cliff jump from the trailers) we watch an entire scene with Lautner performing backflips in the background, and it absolutely reaches the craziness that you expect from an Adam Sandler production.But endless backflips cannot save Grown Ups 2 from being one of the worst films of 2013. Dumb gags, lazy writing and terrible direction aren’t even the worst of its sins: it also wastes the considerable talents of its main cast (including but not limited to James, Rock, Hayek, Maya Rudolph, and Buscemi), who have all been much funnier in much better fare. Worse still is the fact that its opening weekend was an unqualified success – even if it tanks from here on out, Grown Ups 2 is already successful enough to get itself another sequel, as abhorrent as that idea might sound. That means this cast will almost certainly return (and bring on other struggling comedians and D-list celebs while they’re at it) for another sequel that they are too good to take part in, but will accept because the checks clear. There’s absolutely no good reason you should spend your time on this, as it’s obviously a nostalgic cash-grab to separate you from your money. If you’re going to waste your paycheck, you might as well see something original, which certainly doesn't describe Grown Ups 2. Taylor Lautner was the best part of a movie. I’ll never forgive Adam Sandler for that. John C. Anderson is a freelance writer and movie enthusiast living in Boston. His reviews can be found at Hello, Mr. Anderson (http://latestissue.blogspot.com)