Today's Review: Dirty Grandpa

Another review up for FilmTotaal:

Dirty Grandpa - recensie

I had a tough time sitting this one out in the press screening, for the simplest of reasons: it was bad. Real bad. Mind you, with a title like 'Dirty Grandpa', one would not have expected it to be much good to begin with, but this is a whole new level of badness. There simply are no redeeming features present.

First things first, there are hardly any sympathetic characters. The titular old man is a horny pervert obsessed with getting laid and leading his son astray in a whirlwind of sex, drugs and general illicit behavior. The grandson is a wimpy control freak, set to marry a total bitch. On the way to Spring Break in Florida, they meet a bunch of co-eds, including a seemingly nice girl who we know the grandson ought to hook up with immediately, but who ends up stealing his money in her first scene. Her best friend is a total slut. Not to belittle female sexuality by using this word, but there simply are no other denominations as apt as this one. Add some drug dealers, corrupt police officers and loads of partying college kids who only want to get wasted and laid, and there you have the cast of Dirty Grandpa. You'll find it a real challenge to care about any of these people.

What movie buffs would care about, is veteran actor Robert de Niro's career. Sure, he's done plenty of dramatic roles so he's entitled to have a little fun every now and then. But his audience, save for people who truly are cursed with a total lack of a sense of humor, simply won't enjoy Dirty Grandpa with him. This is just not a funny, well written or empathetic character. This old horndog has just lost his dear wife of 40 years and his first reaction is to go out and screw nubile young women. In the process, he wrecks his grandson's impending marriage (bad match though it may have been) and constantly humiliates his sexuality and belittles his character during their little road trip. This is nothing to laugh at, it's morally reprehensible. And even if this set-up would allow for some comedic potential, it's utterly wasted on an uninterrupted stream of genital jokes. There's not a single conversation between any two characters in this flick that doesn't involve 'cocks', 'asses' or other rampant assorted swearing just for the sake of swearing. Needless to say, it grows tiresome swiftly. Not to mention it's all talk and no action, save for a gratuitous shot of Efron being facially confronted with his grandfather's penis (obviously a rubber item). But when it gets down to it, the sex is tame and prudish. Or are you telling me American women really do keep their underwear on during intercourse?

Question remains, why did Robert de Niro - or any of the actors and actresses involved for that matter, since they're all making total fools of themselves, and of us for watching their disgusting antics - opt to play this part? The script was obviously terrible from the get-go. Sure, there probably was some monetary compensation involved, but I do like to think an actor of his stature isn't so down on his luck he has no choice but to accept any and all projects, no matter hoe feeble, that come his way? Maybe he's just telling his fans to go screw themselves, tired of his fabled reputation and the pressure that comes with it. I don't know what his motivation was, but the result surely won't bring happiness to many audiences. Dirty Grandpa truly has nothing to enjoy. Okay, maybe Zac Efron's bare body for his fan base. But nothing else for sure.

Today's Trailer: a million dirty words in the West

Here's a little trailer I posted on MS this here yesterday:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/155673/nieuwe_redband_trailer_voor_a_million_ways_to_die_in_the_west

This trailer is fifty-fifty in regards to showcasing novel material. A lot of it has been covered in previous trailers, while the opening and most of the second half consists of never-before-seen footage. In totally the same, raunchy, puerile way of course. Penis and pussy jokes are as commonplace here as bullets and bandits. This is Seth MacFarlane territory after all, so what else did you expect? I don't mind a potty mouthed neo-western for a change though, it's something else for a change, considering the overly serious tones that characterizes the genre. My fear for this movie is not the debasement of the iconic western genre so much as it is a situation of the trailer containing all the good jokes and the rest ending up to be shitty leftovers only. Especially since it's a red band trailer (again, as the previous previews for this film were), so we already know what kind of filthy language and absurdly steamy situations to expect, nor did they have to save the worst for the actual movie (they still might have, naturally). I don't think it's too smart a move for the promotional campaign to lay out all the cards on the table just yet in this regard, I would have gone with the usual green band trailers and only one red band trailer to spice things up a little. Not that it matters much, as fans of MacFarlane will know this movie just had to be Rated-R, as is his wont. PG-13 is not his style, as is common knowledge. And if it wasn't, it is now, thanks to this trailer and several just like it.

Today's Mini-Review: We're the Millers

We're the Millers: ***/*****, or 6/10

Typical formulaic Hollywood fare. You take a comedically intriguing premise, you drown it in cheap sex jokes and excessive swearing for swearing's sake, you add established funny actors for flavor to make sure audiences will get what they expect (in this case Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis: you didn't think they would be together in something other than a comedy, did you?!), and you garner the whole in moralistic messaging to ensure a predictably happy ending for everyone concerned. The end result in this case is We're the Millers, but you could have rightfully entered many comedy titles of the last decades in its place with these ingredients. We're the Millers isn't the worst of them though, since there's a number of good dirty jokes too (and a killer whale eating a shark for extra kicks). Small time drug dealer David (Sudeikis), a loner living a life totally devoid of responsibilities whatsoever, ends up owning a lot of money to his sleazy supplier (Ed Helms from the Hangover series, largely identical narrative territory). He can make up for it by smuggling a load of weed over the Mexican border though. To avoid getting caught, David decides to masquerade as a family unit on a holiday trip in an RV, together with a broke stripper (Aniston) who hates his guts but needs his money, an obnoxious female teen runaway and a socially awkward boy of eighteen that hasn't yet done the deed (and thus ends up being both the victim of the majority of this flick's crude jokes and getting a girlfriend). After having secured the shipment, this so-called Miller family heads for home, but unfortunately for them David's employer screwed over a Mexican drug lord in the whole transaction, who soon is in hot pursuit together with a grotesque, hulking one-eyed henchman. Plus, they also have to deal with tarantulas, corrupt Mexican officials fishing for sexual favors, agressive border patrols, an actual family on vacation suffering from a dent in their sex life, and of course, each other. However, to the surprise of all of them, they quickly discover the benefits of and acquire a taste for family life, as Hollywood's conformative, conservative propaganda machine is working overtime to make sure all's well that ends well. At least we get a decent amount of witty repartee and performances to match from a cast that is all too familiar with this genre and knows how to make it work, which could also translate as being on auto-pilot. And for those interested, Aniston's sexy dance routines are adequate enough to convince us she's playing a cheap stripper. But overall, We're the Millers proves an all too standard comedy that you'll stick with for 110 minutes and you'll forget about just as fast.