Joyce Van Patten

Grown Ups, starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and David Spade, is a comedy about five friends and former teammates who reunite years later to honor the passing of their childhood basketball coach. With their wives (Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, Maya Rudolph) and kids in tow, they spend the Fourth of July holiday weekend together at the lake house where they celebrated their championship years earlier. Picking up where they left off, they discover why growing older doesn`t mean growing up.

A paralyzed man's friend gives him a smart monkey. The athletic law student Allan Mann is running on the street when a dog attacks him, and he is hit by a truck. He becomes quadriplegic and his house is adapted to his new way of life with a nurse helping him. After a few days, he tries to commit suicide. His best friend, scientist Geoffrey Fisher, is performing genetic experiments with monkeys and looks for Melanie Parker, who trains monkeys for disabled people. He offers his best monkey, Ella, to be trained to help Allan. Soon Melanie delivers Ella to Allan and his life changes for better. However, Geoffrey continues to inject Ella with his experimental drug, and she establishes a dangerous mental connection with Allan and he believes Ella is capable of killing those that Allan hate. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil When Allan becomes a quadriplegic he loses all hope for living until he meets Ella - a monkey trained to fetch and carry for him around the house, obeying him in all things. But Ella is part of another experiment, and when she starts responding to Allan's underlying rage and frustration she has the ability to carry out her master's darkest wishes. —David Carroll <davidc@atom.ansto.gov.au>

Christopher Boyce (Timothy Hutton), a young seminarian, leaves his religious studies and returns to his family home in Rancho Palos Verdes, an affluent peninsula in southern California. He reunites with his friend from childhood, Daulton Lee (Sean Penn). Daulton is a drug smuggler and dealer and is in trouble with the law. He asks Chris to partner with him in the drug business; Chris is not interested and declines. Charlie Boyce (Pat Hingle), Chris's father, pulls strings to get Chris a job at RTX, a large telecommunication company. Chris's polite nature and obvious intelligence at work bring him to the attention of executives Larry Rogers (Macon McCalman), Tony Owens (Jerry Hardin), and Eddie (Nicholas Pryor). After a security review, Chris is assigned to the Vault, a classified area of RTX that is responsible for transmitting encrypted messages among CIA agencies worldwide. Chris soon learns that he and his fellow vault employees, Laurie (Mady Kaplan) and Gene (Dorian Harewood), have free reign in their secret workspace, where they drink, play board games, and generally goof off. In the RTX vault, Chris reads some of the CIA transmissions. By reading and talking to Eddie, Chris learns that the CIA infiltrated Australian labor unions to the CIA's benefit. Chris tells Daulton that he thinks it's wrong for the CIA to get involved in the economy and politics of an ally. He suggests to Daulton that he steal top secret documents from the Vault and that Daulton deliver the documents to the Russian embassy in Mexico. Chris wants to weaken the American intelligence community. Originally, Daulton tells Chris he's a patriot and wants nothing to do with selling secrets to the Russians. However, when he is arrested for dealing by the DEA and facing serious jail time, Daulton decides to jump bail and move to Mexico, avoiding jail. Selling stolen documents will give him a revenue stream and he tells Chris he's interested. Chris photocopies classified documents related to the CIA satellites at RTX and gives them to Daulton. He tells Daulton never to reveal Chris's name to the Russians or else they will no longer need Daulton and then Daulton could be in danger. At the Russian Embassy in Mexico City, Daulton connects with a middle-aged official, Alex (David Suchet). Later, Daulton calls Chris at a pay phone with the code "My uncle says hi" which indicates that the Russians were interested in the documents. Inside his apartment, a shaken Chris calls home and speaks briefly to his mother, who is happy to hear from him and tells him she loves him but she has to run. Chris declines to talk to his father. Daulton continues to meet Alex in Mexico City in various locations, using spy tradecraft to exchange cash for documents. The Russians tell Daulton to get a special spy camera instead of using a copier to copy documents. At first, the deals go smoothly and Daulton is pleased with the cash. In the meantime, Chris meets a young woman, Lana, (Lori Singer) at a pet store. She moves in with him but Chris doesn't tell Lana what he's doing with the classified documents from RTX. Over time, Chris notices that Daulton is destabilizing. He's using heroin regularly and making mistakes, bragging at a party and telling a girl he's a spy. The Russians are getting tired of working with Daulton, because he is not delivering the satellite frequencies they desperately want. At RTX, the Vault is subject to a security inspection by the NSA with only a minute's notice. Chris, Laurie, and Gene frantically work to hide alcohol empties, sloppy work, and dope. The NSA inspector checks surfaces, phones, drawers, and other areas of the vault but finds nothing out of place except one binder. He asks Chris about it and he deflects to Gene. Chris wants to stop stealing the RTX documents and selling them, saying it's made no difference in the balance of power. Daulton, however, wants to grow the business, expand to smuggling drugs on top of documents. He tells Chris that this is his livelihood now and that if Chris refuses to supply more documents to sell, Daulton will tell Chris's father what they've been doing. Chris surprises Daulton by showing up at his hotel in Mexico City. They meet with the Russian handler, Alex, and depart to the embassy. At the embassy, Daulton, agitated, tears the room apart looking for a listening device. Alex tells Chris that he should continue to spy for Russia; he encourages Chris to go to school and then work for the government. Chris says he's not interested in any spying at all anymore and leaves with Daulton. At the airport, Daulton starts to break down, crying and saying he doesn't know who his friends are anymore. Christopher urges him to come back to the U.S. with him, but Daulton pulls himself together and remains in Mexico. At his apartment, Christopher has packed up all of Lana's belongings. He tells her to move out because he doesnt love her anymore. At RTX, Christopher takes secret photographs of the Pyramider Project, a defunct project that has little significance. He signs off from RTX as it's his last day at work. He enters his apartment, only to find his parents and colleagues have thrown him a surprise party. Christopher tells Daulton he wants to make one last delivery for $100,000. The friends agree they're finished with delivering secrets after this last one. Chris admits he was wrong, that the Russians are just as paranoid and manipulative as the U.S. Daulton tells Christopher he agrees; he's finished and he'll do jail time for his crimes if he has to. He says its too dangerous for Christopher to make the drop and travels to Mexico on his own. Daulton is denied entrance into embassy. Suddenly, he is arrested by Mexican police officers for the murder of a police officer; he is very confused and disoriented. He tries to bribe the police office arresting him but only makes the officer angrier. The police interrogate Daulton and torture him to get him to confess to the killing of a police officer. He refuses and is jailed. Eventually, he is released and given the choice of being deported to the U.S. or the Soviet Union. He chooses America. In California, Christopher is trying to reach Daulton by phone on his hotel and is unnerved when another man answers the phone in Daulton's room. He hangs up silently. At the airport, Christopher is trying to get a flight to a country that doesn't have an extradition agreement with the U.S. He sees various people looking at him and suspects they are with the police. He leaves the airport quickly. He senses they police are circling him and that he'll be arrested at any moment. Christopher finds Lana at her job at a movie ticket booth. He tells her that the police are going to ask her a lot of questions and that he really did love her. Mexican officials drop Daulton at the border, where he is immediately apprehended by heavily armed U.S. Marshalls. Christopher has taken his falcon Fawkes to an open field. He removes her jesses and tells her she's free. He watches as she spirals up in flight, then stops on a high branch. At that moment, multiple police vehicles arrive and arrest Christopher, calling him a traitor and knocking him roughly on the ground. Chris goes willingly, watching Fawkes. Christopher is debriefed by FBI agents in a government room. He stays composed and tells the truth over multiple days of interrogation. "What was once a legitimate intelligence gathering agency is now being misused to prey on weaker governments," he says by way of explanation. He thinks back to the day he left the seminary. At the Boyce home, Larry Rogers from RTX is talking about Christopher's case with Charlie Boyce, who tells Larry he doesn't want any favors made for his son. Christopher and Daulton are in shackles as they are brought from their sentencinl. Their parents watch as Chris and Daulton walk, chained, down a long hallway. We see images of the boys during their Confirmation and high school graduation ceremonies. Fawkes flies free in a perfectly blue sky. Andrew Daulton Lee was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Christopher Boyce was found guilty and sentenced to 40 years imprisonment.

Four months after their college graduation, Wendy Beamish (Mare Winningham) and William "Billy" Hicks (Rob Lowe) are in an automobile accident, and their friends, Alec Newberry (Judd Nelson), Kirby "Kirbo" Kegger (Emilio Estevez), Kevin Dolenz (Andrew McCarthy), Leslie Hunter (Ally Sheedy), and Jules (Demi Moore), rush to the hospital. The victims suffer only minor injuries after Billy crashed Wendy's new car while drunk. Jules chastises Wendy for paying Billy's medical fees after he destroyed the car her father gave her as a graduation gift. Billy is arrested for the incident. At the hospital, Kirby sees Dale Bieberman (Andie MacDowell), a beautiful doctor he recognizes from college, and his former crush is reignited. Jules posts Billy's bail, and the friends gather at St. Elmo's Bar, where Kirby works. Leslie and Jules question Wendy for accepting Billy's careless behavior. However, Wendy's low self-esteem and romantic interest in Billy prevent her from cutting him out of her life. Meanwhile, Billy telephones his estranged wife, and mother of his child, then flirts with several girls at the bar. Alec is angry when he learns Billy lost the job in a senator's office that he helped get for Billy. The friends quickly resolve their arguments, however, and happily dance and drink together. Sometime later, Alec discusses his political aspirations with his girl friend Leslie, and suggests they get married. Leslie believes they are not yet ready for marriage. The couple get a late-night visit from Jules, who needs a place to sleep for the night. Elsewhere, roommates Kevin and Kirby talk about Kirby's intense infatuation with Dale Bieberman, and Billy arrives to spend the night. Sometime later, Alec helps Billy obtain another job. Kevin visits Jules's new apartment and wonders how she can afford such an expensive place. Jules asks why nothing sexual ever happened between them, and accuses him of being homosexual and in love with Alec. Kevin denies the accusations, and quickly leaves. Kirby invites Dale Bieberman to an expensive restaurant to impress her, however, the busy doctor has to leave when she is called for an emergency. Leslie cooks dinner for Kevin, who tells her he gave up on love after a girl broke his heart. When Alec returns with a gift of lingerie for Leslie, he confides to Kevin that he cheated on Leslie with the sales girl. He vows he would be faithful if Leslie would agree to marry him, but Kevin is doubtful. Later, Jules gets high while snorting cocaine and telephones Alec to rescue her from a group of strange men. He arrives and accuses her of "crying wolf." Billy visits Wendy at the welfare office where she works, and admits that he lost his new job. Wendy brings him home to have dinner with her wealthy family, and borrows money from her father to give to Billy, who shocks her uptight family by climbing onto the roof. Wendy finds his antics charming, and reveals to him that she is still a virgin. Billy makes a clumsy pass at her, and embarrasses her by making fun of her undergarments. Wendy gives him the rent money he needs, then says she no longer wants to see him. On Halloween, the friends gather at St. Elmo's Bar, where Billy plays saxophone with his band. Alec asks Kevin if he can use his apartment to have sex with the lingerie sales girl, and Wendy arrives with a nerdy date named Howie Krantz (Jon Cutler). Jules continues her wild behavior, and jumps onstage. Billy kisses her while Wendy watches. Billy's wife, Felicia (Jenny Wright), arrives with her own date, and the friends worry how he will react. Billy stops the show to yell at Felicia from stage, then jumps down and punches her date. The fight continues outside the bar, and Billy curses at his wife. Moments later, Billy and Felicia kiss passionately. In time, when Wendy and Leslie have an intervention with Jules over her affair with her married boss, she dismisses their concern. Wendy hesitantly asks Leslie about Billy. Kirby's obsession with Dale Bieberman continues. He follows her to a private party, and admits his feelings to her. She attempts to dash his hopes by listing her many flaws, but Kirby mistakenly believes she is not interested in him because he lacks money, and makes it his mission to become wealthy. Meanwhile, Felicia asks Billy for an annulment, but he denies her, and vows to become a better husband and father to their daughter, Melody. Kirby takes a job as attaché to a wealthy businessman, and throws a party at the man's estate to impress Dale. Wendy's father buys her another car as a bribe to marry Howie, but she remains unenthusiastic. The friends arrive at Kirby's party, but Dale Bieberman fails to attend. Wendy introduces Howie to Billy, and Billy tells her that things are going well between him and Felicia. He apologizes to Wendy for hurting her, then crassly asks if she is still a virgin. Billy takes drugs with Jules, and Alec announces a false wedding date to the crowd, in an attempt to get Leslie to commit. They argue in private, and Leslie accuses him of having an affair. Alec blames Kevin for revealing his secret, then lunges at him. Leslie stops the fight saying it was only a hunch, but Alec's response has proven his guilt. Alec shocks Leslie by demanding she move out of their apartment. Jules drives Billy home and he kisses her. Billy becomes aggressive, and Jules fights him off, saying she only needed a friend to talk to. She accuses him of letting everyone down, and Felicia opens the front door to see her drunken husband in the driveway with Jules. Elsewhere, Kirby learns that Dale Bieberman has gone to a cabin for the weekend, and he follows her. He is embarrassed to discover that she is there with her boyfriend. He attempts to leave, but his car gets stuck in the snow. Dale and her date invite him to spend the night in their cabin. Meanwhile, Leslie stays at Kevin's apartment and discovers that he has been secretly in love with her for years. She and Kevin have sex, and in the morning, Alec arrives to apologize to Kevin, unaware that Leslie is there. When Leslie comes out from the bedroom, Alec is stunned. Kirby gets his car unstuck from the snow, and Dale Bieberman kindly says goodbye. Kirby passionately kisses Dale, leaving her speechless, then drives away laughing. Sometime later, Wendy tells her father that she does not care for Howie, and that it is Billy she loves. Leslie returns to her apartment with Alec to pack her belongings, and tells him that she has moved in with Jules. They argue over her involvement with Kevin, and Alec secretly longs to win her back. Leslie witnesses Jules's drug use, and worries about her friend. Kevin asks Leslie to move in and asserts his love for her, but she tells him it was "just sex" to her, and asks him to leave. Sometime later, Leslie visits Alec at his work and asks for help with Jules, who has locked herself in their apartment after all of her belongings were repossessed. Leslie confronted her after discovering that Jules secretly lost her job three weeks before. Kevin and Kirby meet Alec and Leslie at Jules's apartment, and the men climb the fire escape to look inside. They find Jules sitting on the floor with all the windows open, nearly freezing to death. Kirby leaves to get Billy's help to cut the window bars, and Alec takes out his anger on Kevin, dangling him over the fire escape. Leslie begs him to release Kevin. Billy arrives and convinces Jules to open the door. She tells him she has been visiting her comatose, much-hated former stepmother, and talking to her about why her father hates her. Billy tells Jules that her worries are an illusion, like the story of "St. Elmo's Fire,"--flashes of light in the sky that sailors used to guide their voyages. However, the sailors only imagined them to keep motivated on their journeys. Billy comforts Jules, and admits that they all feel lost, and soon they begin laughing. Later, Billy visits Wendy at her new apartment, tells her what happened with Jules, and shares that Felicia is about to remarry. He pays back some of the money he owes Wendy, and they discuss his upcoming move to New York City. Billy asks Wendy if she is still a virgin, and gently asks her for a going away present. Billy makes love to Wendy. Afterward, she walks him to the bus station, where the rest of their friends await to see Billy off. Billy tells Alec not to lose Leslie, then promises to keep in touch with Wendy. Leslie tells Kevin and Alec that she loves them both, but chooses to be on her own for a while, and they all agree to remain friends. The group plans to meet later for breakfast, but decide to find a new place, not St. Elmo's Bar. Jules jokes about her plans to bury her stepmother in a large cat suit to save on funeral costs.

Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), an alcoholic and former minor-league baseball player, is recruited by a city councilman and attorney who filed a lawsuit against an ultra-competitive Southern California Little League which excluded the least skilled athletes (including his son) from playing. In order to settle the lawsuit, the league agrees to add an additional team - the Bears - which is composed of the worst players in the whole Little League. Buttermaker becomes the coach of the unlikely team, which includes (among others) a near-sighted pitcher, an overweight catcher, a foul-mouthed shortstop with a Napoleon complex, an outfielder who dreams of emulating his idol Hank Aaron, and a motley collection of other "talent". Shunned by the more competitive teams (and competitive parents), the Bears are the outsiders. They play their opening game, and do not even record an out, with the score at 26 to 0 before Buttermaker forfeits the game. Realizing the team is nearly hopeless, he recruits a couple of unlikely prospects: First up, is sharp-tongued Amanda Whurlizer (Tatum O'Neal), a skilled pitcher (trained by Buttermaker when she was younger) who is the 12-year-old daughter of one of Buttermaker's ex-girlfriends. At first, she tries to convince Buttermaker that she has given up baseball, but then she reveals that she had been practicing "on the sly". Before agreeing to join the team, Amanda makes a number of outlandish demands (such as imported jeans, modeling school, ballet lessons, etc.) as conditions for joining. Upon hearing her demands, Buttermaker asks, "Who do you think you are, Catfish Hunter?" Amanda responds by asking, "Who's he?" Rounding out the team, Buttermaker recruits the "best athlete in the area," who also happens to be the local cigarette-smoking, loan-sharking, Harley-Davidson-riding troublemaker, Kelly Leak (Jackie Earle Haley). With Whurlizer and Leak on board, the team starts gaining more confidence, and the Bears start winning games. Eventually, the unlikely Bears make it to the championship game opposite the top-notch Yankees, who are coached by aggressive, competitive Roy Turner (Vic Morrow). As the game progresses, tensions are ratcheted up as Buttermaker and Turner engage in shouting matches, directing their players to become increasingly more ruthless and competitive against each other, going as far as fighting, spiking on slide, or the batter getting hit on purpose. The turnaround point of the game comes after a heated exchange between Turner's son (and Yankees pitcher) Joey (Brandon Cruz) and the Bears at-bat catcher Engelberg (Gary Lee Cavagnaro). Turner orders his son to walk Engelberg, the only Bears hitter he cannot overcome, despite Joey's wish to give it a try. In response, Joey intentionally throws a wild beanball nearly striking Engelberg in the head. Horrified, Turner goes to the mound and slaps his son. On the next pitch, Engelberg hits a routine ground ball back to Joey who exacts revenge against his father by holding the ball until Engelberg has an inside the park home run. Joey then leaves the game dropping the ball at his father's feet. Buttermaker - realizing that he has become as competitive as Turner - puts the benchwarmers on the field, thus giving everyone a chance to play. In spite of this, the finish-up brings up the best team-play from the Bears. After loading the bases with smart tactics (two walks and a bunt) they nearly recover a four run difference, with the last runner getting taken out at the last moment. Having narrowly lost the game at 7 to 6, Buttermaker gives the team free rein of his beer cooler. Although they did not win the championship, they have the satisfaction of having come a long way. The condescending Yankees congratulate the Bears (in a sarcastic tone implying that they really not mean it) telling them that although they are still not that good, they have "guts." Tanner, the shortstop, replies by telling the Yankees where they can put their trophy. The Bears cheer and Lupus overcomes his chronic shyness enough to yell "Wait 'til next year!", then they spray their beers all over each other. The movie ends with a field celebration by the Bears that makes it look as if they won the game.

A man kidnaps the wife of a cavalry commander in order to exchange her for a Gatling gun that's being sold by a gun runner. Joe Baker has a dream. He wants to do 'something big.' When he needs a Gatling gun to accomplish this, he seeks out a black marketeer. The price he wants for the gun? A woman! So Baker kidnaps a woman off of the stagecoach, only to find that she is the wife of the commandant of the local Cavalry detachment. Things get further complicated when a girl named Dover McBride shows up. She has come to force Baker to marry her and return east, as he promised to do four years earlier. —Alfred Jingle Intent on making it big--before his tough fiancée, Dover McBride, arrives from cold Pennsylvania--instead, the grizzled renegade, Joe Baker, finds himself back to square one and penniless. Still unsuccessful after four long years in the dusty New Mexico Territory, Joe knows that time is running up; however, in a desperate attempt to fulfil his aspiration, he summons up the strength for one last heist. As a result, one precarious agreement and yet another bad decision later, Baker has one more problem to deal with: the veteran U.S. Cavalry commander, Colonel Morgan. Under those circumstances, will Joe manage to pull off a surprise victory? Is he destined to do Something Big in his life? —Nick Riganas