Phoenix, Oregon is a vast improvement on the Grown Ups formula.  Grown Ups and Grown Ups 2 were fuelled by seemingly harmless ideas of nostalgia and friendships, but the movies were made disingenuously by the egos of their cast.  Phoenix, Oregon, on the other hand, isn’t wired to be smug. Instead of the story solely rooting itself in the past and being self-congratulatory, memories are used as reference points to fuel aspirations to make more memories.