I like to think of myself as a film fan of extremes. When I walk out of a theater, I either liked or disliked what I just saw. Even if I have conflicting feelings about parts of a film, I generally know which direction my thumb would be facing if I were asked to rate it on the spot. However, there are some instances in which I walk out of a film wondering if I even watched anything at all. Such is the case with Dirty Grandpa, the latest in a long line of bland, by the numbers Dan Mazer comedies (The Dictator, Borat) built around one inherent joke that wears out its welcome in the first act and that you forget ever existed by the end of the third act.
Dirty Grandpa follows Jason Kelly (Zac Efron), a junior associate at his father’s law firm who is about to get married to one of his father’s colleagues’ daughter. When his grandmother dies just a week before his wedding, he’s forced to drive his grandfather, Dick Kelly (Robert De Niro), to Boca Raton, Florida to fulfill his grandmother’s dying wish. Little does Jason realize that his grandfather has a much wilder side, and their drive quickly becomes a wild road trip of drugs, alcohol and sex.
Unfortunately, Dirty Grandpa’s greatest sin is that its premise is funnier than anything the film actually does with it. Casting an Oscar-lauded veteran like De Niro (The Godfather II, Raging Bull) in such a cash grab role is good for a chuckle when watching the trailer, but it quickly becomes evident that De Niro is just walking through the role so that he can get his paycheck. Rather than Taxi Driver or Raging Bull De Niro, we get Meet the Fockers De Niro, a great actor coasting through a middling comedy to get his next gig. De Niro spent the last decade of his career making disposable comedies like this (Little Fockers, The Intern), but this role might be his most poorly chosen yet. We as the audience are supposed to sympathize with his journey as an old man trying to feel young again after his wife’s passing, but instead, the character just comes across as a pervert and a public nuisance.
Zac Efron continues to show promise as a young actor despite the thankless role he has as the wet blanket to De Niro’s bacchanalian senior citizen. Efron exudes a natural likeability reminiscent of actors like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt early in their careers and it’s hard to dislike him, even when he’s playing a stick in the mud character, as he is here. Unfortunately, Efron’s character is what’s inherently wrong with the film’s premise. The film attempts to build Jason as being too uptight and obedient to his father, yet his actions in the film are completely justified. Jason is constantly trying to keep in line with the law, but his grandfather’s debauchery keeps landing him in hot water with the police. At one point, Dick’s partying antics lead to Jason ending up in jail for a night, but the film plays it off as yet another one of grandpa’s wacky antics even though his actions are, in actuality, completely irresponsible and dangerous. Efron essentially plays the Cameron to De Niro’s Ferris Bueller, minus Bueller’s infectious charisma and John Hughes’ sharp writing.
The film also plays like a mashup of every other “opposite personalities paired together” comedy we’ve been inundated with in the past decade. The hijinks delaying the characters on their road trip are reminiscent of Get Him to the Greek. A character trying to reconnect with his youth in the face of his career parallels A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas. The partying spiraling out of control from The Hangover gets name checked. All of these plot similarities only serve to remind me that I could be watching much better films rather than something that comes across as very clichéd at this point.
In lieu of attempting something original or unexpected with its plot developments, Dirty Grandpa instead offers scene after scene of lewd jokes that are about as edgy as they are funny. Every joke is built around some kind of sexual innuendo or reference to genitals without actually building a punch line around these references. There also seems to be an odd undercurrent of jokes that rely too heavily on homophobia and rape that borderline uncomfortable at times. I would venture to guess that the filmmakers felt that this would make their comedy edgier, but my only reaction while watching it was one of “Did they really just say that?”
While the rest of the audience was howling with laughter, I met every joke with a raised eyebrow and embarrassed chuckle. In essence, while they were aiming to be George Carlin, it feels more like The Hangover Part II, a film attempting to break the politically correct taboo but just comes across as mean-spirited and out of place. Even the other characters seem uncomfortable with De Niro’s character's comments, as if they’re at Thanksgiving dinner and their estranged uncle starts making racist jokes and they’re forced to wave it off as him “being from a different time.”
I wish I could muster more of a reaction to Dirty Grandpa, but it’s really just that forgettable of a film. It fails to bring anything new to the table while cannibalizing its predecessors without a fresh perspective to the tired buddies on a road trip comedy template. The best comedies are those that have something deeper going on beneath the surface, but Dirty Grandpa is really just as shallow is it looks. If films like National Lampoon’s Vacation and Caddyshack are the filet mignons of comedy, then Dirty Grandpa is the equivalent of a Big Mac, a completely empty experience that will leave you hungry for something better a few hours later.
Rating: D
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