Blended is slightly better. Not by much, but reteaming with the excellent Drew Barrymore for the third time (the first being the aforementioned and excellent The Wedding Singer and the second the decidedly mediocre 50 First Dates) is a shuffle of feet in the right direction. So then: Blended is better than Grown Ups 2. It’s slightly more entertaining, but as a consequence, just a little bit more frustrating. For in the ingredients here is a better film than the one we get. Its choices are odd, certainly. For instance, you could have easily taken away Barrymore’s family narrative and focused on Sandler’s, which is about a family coming to terms with the death of their mother, and how a sporty all American dad gets on with the task of raising three girls who are all going through very different things. The scenes with Sandler’s character and his daughters are the moments that tend to work here. But around those glimmers of something better is the rest of Blended, a predominantly beige film filled with lazy and mostly unfunny gags, pointless comedic setups and seemingly every single African stereotype you can think of flung into your face for two hours (the first 30 minutes of which are almost unwatchable). A band of traditional singers led by former NFL star Terry Crews are practically grating and pointlessly woven through the story, just in case you missed what had just happened two seconds earlier. Furthermore, Barrymore and Sandler are fine as the leads, but lack any notable personality. Sandler has given up any pretence of acting and now just plays a similar version of himself in every movie he is in, while Barrymore, more disappointingly, gives one of her weaker performances here as the slightly neurotic but sweet Lauren. She is better than this film and hopefully we’ll see some more of that sparkle soon, behind or in front of the camera. Apart from the kids in the movie, the rest of the supporting cast are completely forgettable. At one point, Shaquille O’Neal turns up as a workmate of Jim’s, but it’s such a blur I’m almost convinced I imagined it. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.