Dan Mazer
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Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (2013)
Directed by Jeff Tremaine
influenced Dirty Grandpa (2016)
Plot Themes
Back in 2013, the Jackass team conjured up Bad Grandpa , with Johnny Knoxville slapping on old man prosthetics and acting incorrigibly.
Not to be confused with Bad Grandpa (the hidden camera prank movie starring Johnny Knoxville in old man make-up), this painfully unfunny, deliberately offensive comedy marks a new low in Robert De Niro’s career and will undoubtedly rank as one of the worst films of the year, despite the fact that it’s still only January.
People are already confusing it with Johnny Knoxville’s Bad Grandpa, but that movie is 12 Years A Slave compared to this.
The imposition of this masterplot is really the only thing separating the film from "Jackass" spin-off Bad Grandpa , just as one word is the only thing separating the two concepts.
The Jackass guys, whose "Bad Grandpa" runs rings around this one, could teach Mazer a thing or two.
All of this invites comparisons to both Sideways (last-hurrah-before-a-wedding road trip) and Bad Grandpa (intergenerational male bonding), most of them unfavorable.
Not raunchy enough for the Animal House set, not sweet enough for those looking to snuggle up with young Efron, the movie seems unlikely to satisfy any audience.
Once the movie backs into a weird corner that skirts the hem of the infamous “mind if we dance with your dates?” scene in “Animal House,” De Niro’s character suddenly turns righteous in the ways of sexual tolerance even as he’s humiliating a rougher black character.
Dirty Grandpa exists somewhere between The Graduate and Animal House , with a proclivity for pop cultural references and reverence for spring break as a sort of rejuvenating experience.
When Jason recreates the finale of The Graduate , in a scene laced with hatred towards disability, endorsement of philandering, and a photo of a dog butt-fucking a former Disney child star, it is, as far as snapshots of the conversation in the United States circa 2016 go, not half bad.
That includes the film's climax, which emptily restages the comparable scene from The Graduate , and provides an errant reference to ISIS for good, faux-provocative measure.
Dirty Grandpa exists somewhere between The Graduate and Animal House , with a proclivity for pop cultural references and reverence for spring break as a sort of rejuvenating experience.
Have we time-traveled back to the 1980s, when movies like Porky's reigned supreme?
"The Godfather, Part II," "Taxi Driver," "The Deer Hunter," "Raging Bull," "The Untouchables, "Goodfellas," "Heat."
By ‘legacy’, people usually mean De Niro’s frequent collaborations with Martin Scorsese, or his other dramatic roles in films such as Once Upon A Time In America (1984), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Cape Fear (1991) and Heat (1995).
From Freaky Friday (1977) to Big (1988), major Hollywood releases have often mined humour from characters of contrasting ages swapping bodies, tastes and social situations (2009’s 17 Again even starred Efron).
First was Last Vegas (The Hangover for oldies), then The Intern (retirees offering plenty for the younger generations), and now Dirty Grandpa, a road trip that shows grandparents can drink, fight and talk dirty with the best of them.
Things go way downhill from there in a movie that tries for the gross-out humor of stuff like The Hangover but makes that film look like high art by comparison.
Dirty Grandpa wants to be a vulgar, raunchy comedy à la The Hangover (you have much to answer for, Todd Phillips) that desperately tries to elicit that "Oh no, they didn't!"
In order to distract his party-pooping grandson so that he can have his own fun, Dick gets Jason so drunk and high he ends up on the beach naked after a night of drunken antics that will be revealed later via a plot device stolen directly from The Hangover.
He reaches for a "Graduate" homage in the staging of his penultimate scene at Meredith's much ballyhooed rehearsal dinner and Hough serves him well here, her overly dramatic song rendition funnier than anything projected behind her (shades of "The Hangover" again).
All of this invites comparisons to both Sideways (last-hurrah-before-a-wedding road trip) and Bad Grandpa (intergenerational male bonding), most of them unfavorable.
The best, last time was the 2004 Alexander Payne film "Sideways," with Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church as two pals on a road trip in wine country just prior to Church's impending wedding.
Maybe Dirty Grandpa wouldn’t be so bad if not for the fact that partway through the last act you realize that the plot for this movie is stolen directly from the far superior Sideways.
Eventually the movie arrives at vague platitudes that can at best be described, to quote Jack Black in “High Fidelity,” as sentimental tacky crap, and are beyond disingenuous after the physical and emotional damage that has been wrought mere seconds before.
Other stories, including 21 Jump Street (2012) and Never Been Kissed (1999), involve adults who try to pass as teenagers.
Then there’s a Terminator reference, a Starship Troopers quote and an outstanding Andre the Giant anecdote.
There's Something About Mary (1998)
Directed by Bobby Farrelly
influenced Dirty Grandpa (2016)
Themes
Whatever promise Dirty Grandpa held of being a profane yet intelligent and insightful comedy (like Bad Santa or There’s Something About Mary) is quickly lost after an unrelenting and meaningless barrage of rape jokes, drug jokes, child-molestation jokes, masturbation jokes, Jew jokes, racial jokes, gay jokes, lesbian jokes, disability jokes, and one joke that somehow finds a reason to reference Mother Teresa’s genitals.
And of course, he also directed seminal kidult texts, from The 40-Year-Old Virgin to Trainwreck .
They're dogged by drug dealer Tan Pam (Jason Mantzoukas, "Sleeping with Other People"), gang banger Tyrone (Brandon Mychal Smith, TV's 'You're the Worst'), muscle heads Cody (Jake Picking) and Brah (Michael Hudson) and apparently the only two cops in Daytona, officers Reiter (Henry Zebrowski, "The D Train") and Finch (Maureen “Mo” Collins, "The 40-Year-Old Virgin").
The sex scenes between De Niro and Plaza had a “Last Tango In Paris” level of explicitness, for instance.
From Freaky Friday (1977) to Big (1988), major Hollywood releases have often mined humour from characters of contrasting ages swapping bodies, tastes and social situations (2009’s 17 Again even starred Efron).
Whatever promise Dirty Grandpa held of being a profane yet intelligent and insightful comedy (like Bad Santa or There’s Something About Mary) is quickly lost after an unrelenting and meaningless barrage of rape jokes, drug jokes, child-molestation jokes, masturbation jokes, Jew jokes, racial jokes, gay jokes, lesbian jokes, disability jokes, and one joke that somehow finds a reason to reference Mother Teresa’s genitals.
My best hope is that it is a Joaquin Phoenix-esque I’m Still Here stunt she’s pulling on all of us, and she’ll show up on Colbert tonight or something and let us know she was just messing around.
“I Give It a Year” starts where most romantic comedies end, with a lavish wedding between two comely, endearing characters — in this case, brand consultant Nat (Byrne, again cast, a la “Bridesmaids,” as an uptight, neurotic beauty) and novelist Josh (recently much-in-demand Spall, last seen in “Life of Pi”).
Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids) and Rafe Spall (Life of Pi) play Nat and Josh, a couple who fall in love at a party and marry in a lavish wedding eight months later.
As husband Josh, Rafe Spall (2012's " Life of Pi ") matches (or should it be mismatches?)
We witness the meeting and courtship of Nat (gorgeous Rose Byrne) and Josh (agreeable everyman Rafe Spall, last seen in “Life of Pi”) over a quick musical montage — the key word being quick.
Hough is legitimately great as the marriage-obsessed control freak Meredith, a sort of female equivalent to the character played by Bradley Cooper in “Wedding Crashers.”
It takes both talent and intelligence to remain a Hollywood icon into your 70's, but it's hard not to wonder if Dirty Grandpa isn't De Niro's Jaws 4, the latter being a film that star Michael Caine acknowledged as being dreadful yet also a film that he's quick to acknowledge bought him a very nice house.