As we have seen, one of Leigh's basic narrative devices to test his characters and reveal their limitations is to pair them with antitypes. In Grown-Ups, Dick and Mandy are precisely the kind of students who give migraines to teachers like Ralph and Christine Butcher. And Gloria, in turn, exists to disrupt first Dick and Mandy's own small purchase on order and subsequently Ralph and Christine's. The meeting of matter and antimatter almost always generates farce, but what makes a Leigh film different from an Ealing picture is that the comedy is also serious. The comical outer events are vehicles for serious inner reassessments and revelations. The physical uproar leads to genuine emotional upheaval.