Dirty Grandpa

Synopsis: Just before his wedding, a young go-getting Atlanta lawyer, Jason (Zac Efron) has to drive his recently-widowed  grandfather, Dick (Robert De Niro) to Florida.

Dirty Grandpa arrives on our shores on a raft of negative critical reception. Frankly, given the state of American film comedy, it is hard to see what the problem is. In fact, if anything, it is an object lesson on how Hollywood film comedy has evolved (or, more pertinently, degenerated) in the new millennium   If you imagine Meet The Parents (2000) wedded to Superbad (2007) you’d pretty much have the measure of this film, a mixture of potty-mouthed humour and feel-good sentimentality. .  

The real problem is that whereas both those films had considerable heart to their stories, Dirty Grandpa is a contrived vehicle, taking the familiar road-trip template and investing it with wall-to-wall jokes about dicks, vaginas, butt-f**king and lesbians.  Although the humour largely derives from the sheer excessiveness of the pudenda jokes at least the film does not suffer from the worst sin of a comedy, that of not being funny at all.  Although some of the gags fall flat, unless you really are prudish, there are some chuckles to be had, with writer John Phillips riffing rapid-fire with the sexually-tuned puns.

Much of the negative criticism seems to be addressed to the presence of De Niro who plays Grandpa Dick like Jack Byrnes’ disreputable twin brother.  It is true that the actor of the Scorsese years seems long gone but the truth is well, yes, he actually is long gone (De Niro's last substantial film was 1995’s Heat). The good news is that he is not playing the neutered senior citizen of Nancy Meyers' recent The Intern. And that, at least from a male perspective, might be the best thing that you can say about this film although you've got to look askance at any film that makes being a Green Beret into something cool.

Dirty Grandpa isn't a great, or even a good, film but if you are a superannuant in need of some vicarious bad behaviour it could do the trick. Just don’t take the wife.  She can go to Dirty Grandma, which is no doubt being penned somewhere in Hollywood as we sit here.

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