Dirty Grandpa

Robert De Niro’s efforts to completely obliterate his once-sterling cinematic reputation continue with Dirty Grandpa, as the progressively unwatchable movie forces the venerable actor into one cringe-worthy and desperately unfunny scenario after another. The narrative follows Zac Efron’s uptight Jason Kelly as he’s forced to drive his grandfather (De Niro’s Dick) to Florida, with the movie subsequently detailing the characters’ debauched exploits on the road and at spring break. It’s interesting to note that Dirty Grandpa announces its less-than-competent, sub-sitcom-level intentions right from the get-go, as the movie’s opening stretch features a number of aggressively over-the-top elements that are as tedious as they are devoid of laughs – with, for example, Adam Pally’s irritating turn as an unreasonably wacky relative emblematic of the movie’s misguided sensibilities. (Sample line of dialogue: “I’d rather let Queen Latifah shit in my mouth from a hot air balloon.”) And while the movie admittedly does possess one or two passable sequences (eg Dick unleashes an amusing tirade on a golf course), Dirty Grandpa has been suffused with a whole raft of eye-rollingly ill-advised elements (eg a pair of seriously unfunny wacky cops) that, perhaps predictably, wreak havoc on the film’s already-tenuous momentum. The laughably sentimental final stretch only confirms Dirty Grandpa‘s place as a fairly worthless piece of work, with De Niro and Efron’s continuing efforts to elevate the proceedings proving fruitless in the face of bottom-of-the-barrel, far-from-competent material. (And this is to say nothing of Aubrey Plaza’s nails-on-a-chalkboard turn as a lusty coed.)

*1/2 out of ****