Dirty Grandpa (Cinema Review)

Starring: Robert De Niro, Zac Efron Zoey Deutch, Aubrey Plaza, Dermot Mulroney
Directed By: Dan Mazer
Running Time: 102 mins
BBFC Certificate: 15
UK Release Date: January 28th 2016

This film won’t be for everyone’s tastes and ultimately made me question what Robert De Niro is doing with his career. I reviewed this film with the mind-set that it would be another standard American college sex comedy, and as such I was in full American Pie (1999) mode as I watched it. More so expecting a hormonal comedy full of crude jokes, but not involving a personal interaction with a fruit-based dessert.

Dirty Grandpa tells the ‘wholesome’ story of Dick Kelly (De Niro), a recent widower who tricks his grandson, Jason Kelly (Zac Efron), into driving him down to Daytona beach for spring break, so that they can spend some quality family time together and so that Dick can get his end away.

To flesh it out a bit more Jason is uptight, works for a law firm and is about to get married to the wrong woman. As such Dick wants to liberate his oppressed grandson, reinvigorate Jason’s lost free spirit and forgotten desire to be a photographer, but the story doesn’t really matter in a film like this as it is just an excuse to set up lots of bland set pieces and poor jokes.

Now you already know how this film plays out and how it will end. To be fair it is aimed at the teenage market and I would have probably loved this film if I snuck into the cinema as a horny 13-year-old. However I am now older and have seen many a teen comedy about sex and dick jokes, so all this was unoriginal and not really that funny. Probably best to switch your brain off if you want to watch this one.

Whilst I did laugh at a few moments, there is a lot of repetition of the same jokes which weren’t that funny to begin with. We have a lot of flat characters and stereotypes, but there are no memorable moments such as the shower scene in Porky’s (1981), the zit in National Lampoon’s Animal house (1978) or the pie in American Pie (1999). It is very much by the numbers and doesn’t add much new to the genre, which is a shame as there could have been some very cringe-worthy age-related jokes –  for example the flex off scene would have benefited with the Kelly’s competitors being spiked by Viagra before they went on stage.

Which leads me to the term ‘Viagra cinema’: essentially films where older men bed younger ladies (see Last Tango in Paris (1972) and this year’s Youth), a final conquest if you will. Granted that is the basis of this film, although it doesn’t quite get the message across that everyone should make the most of their life and the opportunities presented before you.

This message further enforces my curiosity towards De Niro’s recent film choices. Minus a few performances in David O. Russell films I wonder if he cares anymore. He’s done a few comedies trying to encapsulate the popularity of Meet the Parents (2000), and a lot of other recent films that I have never heard of. I am wondering if he is doing it for the money, to get recognition from a younger audience or to just keep busy in his senior years, which I suppose mirrors his character in this film. But the man is a legend and deserves better roles.

That being said he does look like he is having fun during this film, has the best jokes and cares about the role (for a comparison don’t see Bruce Willis in the last Die Hard film. There are only 3 Die Hard films and that is that). There are a few dramatic moments in this film which he convincingly pulls off, but these soon descend into more crude jokes.

Dick is the fun carefree yin to Jason’s stern and career focused yang, which is a character reversal that should have worked better if there was more chemistry between them. Now I don’t think I have seen a film with Zac Efron in before but he looks and acts like a living action man, complete with plastic abs.

Aubrey Plaza also stars as the collage girl who wants Dick (this joke probably wrote itself) and although she plays a different character to the wonderful April in Parks and Recreation (2009 – 2015) she just comes across as a girl who has issues. Like De Nero she deserves better roles.

There is a forgettable love interest for Efron, a pair of idiot cops, and a local celebrity drug dealer who I suppose is meant to be the modern equivalent of Cheech and Chong, who makes Jason smoke crack out of a vapour pen. I’m not sure of the science behind that, but it’s not the most unrealistic element in this film.

Danny Glover has a great yet brief cameo in this film in a nursing home, which is a shame as I would have liked to have seen him broken out and buddy up with De Niro for the slow and muddled final act of the film as two men who are really too old for this shit.

I was surprised to find that this film was written by one individual named John Phillips, and not by a usual team of writers which is the norm for films like these. What is even more surprising (and worrying) is that he has written Bad Santa 2. Oh dear.

Overall Verdict: Another sex comedy which is far from perfect and full of clichés, but I’m sure it will be loved by teenagers. Nothing really original, truly funny or memorable, and a waste of De Nero’s talent.

Reviewer: George Elcombe