Catching an old man masturbating to porn wasn’t the worst thing in this film. I feel like I should repeat that. I’m not going to. The old man being Robert DeNiro did not improve this scene any. The old man just hours removed from the funeral of his wife of forty years? Also not an improvement factor. Yes, from a group of jerks who spied Bad Grandpa with envy and concluded, “Wouldn’t it be great if this were a real guy?” here’s Dirty Grandpa, which really and truly got the bad part right.
Jason (Zac Efron) is too young to be this stuffy. But he seems content in his life as a junior associate at a law firm and engaged to Meredith the shrew (Julianne Hough – for all this film hates her, she looks fantastic here). Naturally, his very recently widowed grandfather Dick (DeNiro) has
to put an end to all that. And Dick goes about showing Jason the error of his young ways by insisting on a road trip pussy hunt where he proceeds to insult, humiliate, and violate Jason at every turn.
Before I forget, Dirty Grandpa isn’t 100% without merit – Aubrey Plaza had possibly her best moments on film as a Geritol hussy. Also, the film tried very hard to pretend that there was a method to the awful – Dirk really was trying to help Jason. Awwwww.
However the film tried to redeem itself, I am stuck with two moments: 1) where Dick spikes his grandson’s drink (with Xanex) to get him to “lighten up,” which directly/indirectly led to 2) Jason waking up on the beach the next day wearing essentially a strategically placed sock puppet and nothing more. Then a small child approaches and wants to play with the puppet for which Jason goes to jail. No matter what else Dirty Grandpa said, I’m going to remember it as the film that gave us implied pedophilia and subsequent incarceration for the sake of humor.
And lest I forget the root cause – how is it when you spike a woman’s drink, that’s the work of Satan, but when you spike a man’s drink, those are the seeds of comedy? That’s a double standard that has to get lost right now. Spiking the drink of any innocent no matter how foul or how much he “needs it” … not cool. And you might miss this little felony if you were caught up in the plot where a belligerent and fairly awful old man constantly tries to get laid.
One recurring theme in Dirty Grandpa is Robert DeNiro sticking his thumb
up Zac Efron’s ass. Counting golf club poundage, DeNiro works that ass at least six times in this film by my count. While the fella next to me found this hilarious, I kept wondering why he was laughing. Was it the homoerotic incest nature of the act? Was it that old man DeNiro hasn’t yet learned something that every child under ten should have learned? If roles were reversed, would we have found that funny? I think it was two things – one is that it’s the old man out-immaturing the younger man. This is easy to conclude as when Dick attacks Jason’s ass, Jason is always in “adult mode”—stiff posture, conservative clothing, talking about lawyering, etc. For the one-upsmanship in Beavis & Butt-headery, I say, yeah, um, congratulations? The more important reason, however, is that the thumb-up-the-ass prank is grandpa Dick symbolically rejecting old man values. See? He’s acting like a stooge; he’s making fun of stuffiness and argyle golf wear. But if this is an important message, if Dirty Grandpa needs to tell us how important it is that curmudgeony coots go on spring break and behave like jackasses, why stop there? Why even have a scene on a golf course? Why bother honoring a forty-year marriage? The reason is simple – because this terrible movie didn’t have the guts to dive down the sewer hole it pried open.
On the road with Jason and Dick
Grandpa is looking for any old trick
Here’s the appeal:
“DeNiro’s a heel”
This whole movie just makes me sick
Rated R, 102 Minutes
D: Dan Mazer
W: John Phillips
Genre: Cringe
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Generation baiters
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Do you like to think of your grandfather as a pussy hound?
