Dirty Grandpa

Once the credits started rolling for Dirty Grandpa, the only thing I could say was, "Oh my god." It was shocking. From beginning to end the movie is shock humor, gross-out humor, crass, offensive, childish and stupid. But you know what? I laughed a lot. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't entertained throughout most of this movie. Sure, it follows a lot of road trip movie tropes and the perfunctory fight/make-up conflict near the end, but one thing about Dirty Grandpa is that it's consistent. Dirty joke after dirty joke; some of them hit, some of them miss, but they don't stop. Some of these things I never thought I'd hear come out of Robert De Niro's mouth, but the fact that it's him saying it makes it all the more funny. People will say this is a slap in the face to his legacy, but it really isn't. The Family was. Little Fockers was. This movie knows what it is - a lewd, politically incorrect road trip comedy, and it succeeds in that regard.

What surprised me most about Dirty Grandpa is the chemistry between Zac Efron and Robert De Niro. They have a great comedic rapport that actually feels authentic, which helps the more insane scenes retain some semblance of realism (as thin as it may be). The rest of the cast is enjoyable too, especially Aubrey Plaza as the overtly slutty college girl who continuously surprised me with every grotesque statement uttered from her mouth. Oddly enough, De Niro feels right at home here. It's as if his character from Meet the Parents went off the deep end and decided to go on a spring break road trip with Zac Efron. Seriously, his character is ex-special forces and everything. Efron also proves once again that he's a comedic force to be reckoned with playing the straight corporate man put in awkward social situations.

I don't know what people were expecting from Dirty Grandpa. Look at the title, look at the trailers. Are you really surprised? It was marketed as a gross-out comedy from day one, and guess what? It's gross. It's vile; it's degrading; it's shockingly inappropriate. Is it a good movie? Not a chance in hell. But the goal of a comedy is to make the viewer laugh, and Dirty Grandpa made me laugh. Hard.

Now, if you don't like offensive humor, you should stay the hell away from this. Just know what you're getting into before seeing Dirty Grandpa and you can definitely have some fun watching it.

This movie isn't actually that bad; it certainly doesn't deserve the endless line of 1-star reviews. I went to see it with very, very low expectations, after reading a negative review of it, and ended up enjoying quite a bit of it.

Even from the trailer you can tell this is a silly, childish comedy with plenty of toilet and/or sexual humor. I don't know what people came to expect from it - this certainly doesn't attempt to be anything else besides that. Maybe many people aren't used to seeing De Niro in such a role, but hey, he's done other silly comedies already. Not all the jokes are that great, but it was good fun nevertheless.

So, definitely childish, definitely silly, but also definitely funny in my book. I even ended up feeling for De Niro's character - hey, it's his last stand after all. So, if you don't expect much and aren't easily offended by jokes that sometimes are a bit too silly / gross /etc, you might even enjoy this!

Have you ever noticed that often when we are on the road driving to somewhere, suddenly there's 2-door convertible Porsche whizzed by on either side of your 10-year old clunky Corolla, you looked up and you always found the driver of that $100thousand++ sport car was a gray haired or baldy old gizzard. That scene always made you think: Why so many old farts driving these kind fast cars? After you looked in the mirror and did some deep soul search, you'd suddenly realize that time is the essence of forcing you to do something more extravaganza before it's too late. Everybody wants to go to heaven/paradise(*if there's one), but better late than sooner; and before the curtain calls you to kick the bucket, better drive a dream car before DMV requesting you to do a eyesight test.

De Niro, I think also got this before-its-too-late urgent syndrome. Like some of the other old Hollywood gizzards, Christopher Plummer, Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Diane Keaton, Michael Cann... he would respond and accept any cast thrown his way, cashing in his old fame is the only way to add up more zeros in his bank account.

But there's a negative drawback: most of these films he signed on were not serious enough movies but so-called "Comedy", the genre that has been messed up with "Farce"(or, Farmedy?). By doing so many clown-like characters in so many farces, now his facial expressions and his acting were limited only to his face: his mouth and his wrinkles acting formula, and nothing else. Almost in all of his recent years' movies, he just repeatedly used his ugly and uglier old facial expressions to waltz through all of these formulaic miserable farces, the only improved difference is that mole on his face. Making more money as he still could, to hell with the screenplay, the scenario, the plot...since farce does need or require his once great performing art, all he has to do is his squeezed facial expressions, dirty words in the dialog are the easier part. Want me to play a role in your farce? Money first, no refund, if the movie turned out to be a bummer. Once you decided to become a beggar, you just couldn't be a picky chooser. My God, look at his facial expressions in every movie, they were all the same.

Just saw Dirty Grandpa with a theater full of 60- and 70-somethings (myself included). Appropriately, it was a 10:50 a.m. showing. I can tell you that everyone - my wife and 86-yr-old father-in-law included - were howling at this thing. Sure it was over-the-top gross, but it was also very, very funny. The final scene between Aubrey Plaza and DeNiro had me laughing so hard I had tears running down my cheeks. I can't believe all of the god-awful reviews I'm reading for this movie. I have to admit that I love Aubrey Plaza, so watching her interact with DeNiro was a real treat (and consistently funny). Zac Efron was solid as the grandson ... and had to have been an incredibly good sport to put up with all he had to in his role. I say, if you're over 60 and not offended by raunchy humor, give this movie a chance. I thought it was great!

This might be a great movie for some audiences, obviously there are enough people who like such things, considering that they keep making them and they become box-office hits. This movie relies on the typical American exclusive sensation, on its dirtiness and dark humour. I'm a person who is able to take a joke and understands dark humour, but this movie is purely dirty, banal and unfunny. Many of the actors are overacting in their characters' dirtiness. It is pretty much a messed up commercial sh*t like Ted 2, except that at least there is not a living teddy bear married to a slutty drug addict (thank God). It's lame how they mix up the banal sentimental moments with the tasteless humour and the totally disgusting dirty moments which are supposed to be entertaining. It's full of movies like this that have banal plots plus random dumb moments filled with massive drug use. Other than that, it's well-shot. At least this we could expect to be nice. It's not too bad if we take the fact I watched it at home and managed to watch until the end.