Few actors are as legendary as Robert De Niro. Beginning with Mean Streets, De Niro built a jaw-dropping portfolio throughout the ’70s — The Godfather: Part II, Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Raging Bull — immediately establishing himself as one of the greatest film actors of all time. He was Martin Scorsese’s muse for years, back before DiCaprio could even tie his own shoes. He has worked with the greats — Francis Ford Coppola, Bernardo Bertolucci, Elia Kazan, Sergio Leone — and won two Oscars. When you think of the new school of Method actors that emerged in the early 1970s, those fully committed movie stars who grew up worshipping Marlon Brando and revolutionized American film acting, De Niro is one of the very first to come to mind (along with Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino).
But then, around the turn of the century, in his mid-’50s, De Niro discovered comedy. And that was fun for a while. In films like the Analyze This and Meet the Parents series, De Niro had the chance to flex a different kind of acting muscle as he found laughs by essentially parodying the intense tough-guy roles that made him famous. Unfortunately, these fun early comedies proved to be a gateway drug — outside of the films he makes for David O. Russell (Joy being the current example), De Niro has evidently stopped caring about the art altogether, stacking his latter-day résumé with one paycheque movie after another that feature his lazy, phoned-in performances. Recent mediocrities like Being Flynn or Last Vegas or Grudge Match are one thing, however; his latest “comedy” is as embarrassing as it is sad. In the new film Dirty Grandpa, Robert De Niro seems to have reached the point in his career where his main goal is to systematically dismantle his cinematic legacy.
De Niro stars as Dick Kelly, a recent widower who tries to reconnect with his grandson Jason (Zac Efron) after his wife’s funeral by asking Jason to drive him from his home in Georgia to Boca Raton, Florida. Jason, a hard-working corporate lawyer, is getting married a week later to the humourless and prissy Meredith (Julianne Hough, Rock of Ages) — though Dick hopes to convince him that she’s not the right woman for him. Looking to recapture his youth and reawaken his sexual appetite after being a faithful husband for 40 years, Dick gets them into a series of misadventures as their road trip takes an unplanned detour to Daytona Beach right in the midst of Spring Break. Along the way, the duo encounter Shadia (Zoey Deutch, Vampire Academy), an old classmate of Jason’s — who might just be the woman he should be with — and her pals Lenore (Aubrey Plaza, NBC’s Parks and Recreation) and Bradley (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Lifetime’s UnREAL).
Dirty Grandpa is a film utterly devoid of jokes and humour, but which aims to get big reactions by featuring outrageous sight gags and by having its actors constantly say the filthiest, most shocking things imaginable. De Niro, playing a one-dimensional douchebag horndog (until he suddenly has layers at the end), nevertheless fully commits to his no-holds-barred performance. I’ve mentioned being disappointed with the actor’s bland, treading-water performances in recent years… but, man, are those preferable to this. That such a celebrated all-time great has been reduced to this dreck is basically the cinematic equivalent of Paul McCartney releasing an album of Rebecca Black covers. I would much prefer to see De Niro serving me fries at McDonald’s — he’d be paid a hell of a lot less money, but at least he’d still have dignity.
Efron, meanwhile, is an actor clearly still trying to find the right direction for his career. After becoming famous as part of the High School Musical franchise, he understandably is trying to distance himself as much as possible from the Disney factory as he gets older. And, for a couple of years there, he was choosing to work on interesting films — like Ramin Bahrani’s At Any Price and Lee Daniels’s The Paperboy, which are not necessarily great films, but which come from genuine filmmakers who have something meaningful to say. Lately, Efron too has gotten stuck in the quicksand of bro-tastic comedy, with Dirty Grandpa following immediately on the heels of That Awkward Moment and Neighbors. I think that Efron is a really good actor, and a very underrated one too — he always has a lot of personality and can connect emotionally to any material he’s given. Even though he’s currently choosing to star only in the lowest brow of comedies, he brings a genuineness to his performances that really makes his characters feel real and three-dimensional. I sense that, with the right films and the right directors, Efron could really emerge as a respected film actor and not just as the likable hunky star of dumb comedies. He’s currently relying on films that fetishize his good looks and muscular physique (and, god, is Dirty Grandpa obsessed with Efron’s naked body), but he’s talented enough that he ought to start building his range and choosing more prestigious projects to ensure career longevity, since he’ll eventually age out of that buff body.
First-time screenwriter John M. Phillips is so focused on his “jokes” about boobies and peepees that he can’t be bothered to give the supporting cast anything to work with. Plaza, who has such a dry and unusual energy that can be incredibly effective when used well, plays a young woman who can only think about how badly she wants to have sex with De Niro’s character. That’s literally the only thing she gets to play. When the two have scenes together, the audience is subjected to interminable dialogue in which they do nothing more than describe exactly what they want to do to each other’s bodies, in the most thorough and explicit detail. Bowyer-Chapman, similarly, gets just one single thing to play — his Bradley is stereotypically gay. That’s all. He has no inner life, no character beyond that. He’s just a big ol’ flamer. The first time De Niro’s character meets Bradley, he stares at him for a few seconds, swears, and says, “I’m sorry, but you’re just so gay!” That is the exact quote. Of course, everyone at my screening found it outrageously funny. This is the type of audience that the filmmakers are clearly targeting, and it’s not pretty.
Director Dan Mazer comes from Sacha Baron Cohen’s writing team, and he was actually Oscar-nominated for co-writing Borat. In Dirty Grandpa, Mazer is going after that same brand of shock humour, except he fails to find the social commentary behind it that Cohen manages at his best. This film is just lazy, formulaic, trashy drivel that finds nothing at all that’s new in its inherently misogynistic don’t-let-him-marry-the-controlling-shrew cliché of a plot. Add to that a slumming iconic movie star actively trying to tarnish his legend and you’ve got a real loser for the ages here.
And yet… and yet… did it somehow win me over by the end? Please revoke my cinephile card right now. Shame me in the public square. Do it. Because this movie is next-level bad. And I hated nearly every second of it. But then, at the end, when Jason dumps Meredith so he can be with Shadia — and you’d better not whine that I’m spoiling things; how else did you think this would end? — I almost felt the stirrings of the beginnings of a hint of a spark of fondness for this film. But it’s all because of Zac Efron. He’s so good at tracking the development of this character (despite its being atrociously written) over the course of the film, and such a natural at finding the nuances and little quirks in his interpretation of the character, that for just a moment he made me believe that I cared. I’m not suggesting that Efron is giving a, say, Robert De Niro-calibre performance (though what does that even mean anymore?). But he’s so open and reactive an actor, so connected and present at all times, that, just for a second at the end there, he managed to turn my disgusted grimace into a satisfied smile. And that’s really saying something. Up your game, Efron — you’re so much better than Dirty Grandpa. As for you, De Niro… I don’t even know what to say.
