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Movie date: Dirty Grandpa (R21)

You’ll need a shower after to get rid of the residual filth, so avoid Dirty Grandpa at all costs

STARRING: Robert De Niro, Zac Efron, Zoey Deutch, Aubrey Plaza

DIRECTOR: Dan Mazer

THE SKINNY: Recently widowed Dick Kelly (De Niro) tricks his straight-laced lawyer grandson Jason (Efron) into driving him to Florida for spring break. What
follows is a road trip neither of them will forget, as the raunchy senior is determined to be as perverted as possible.

RATING: R21


MARS by JASON JOHNSON

What a hunk of junk.

Dirty Grandpa is among the worst films I've ever seen, and I'm frankly disgusted that Efron would blow off his High School Musical 10-year reunion to promote it.

Now let's just get this over with.

The main problem with Dirty Grandpa is that it is such utter BS.

De Niro's character is meant to be inspirational, an old guy who is teaching his grandson how to embrace life and be a real man.

He's put on a pedestal as an exemplar of a bygone era when men fought and caroused like magnificent beasts. The fact that they were also racist and homophobic is seen as an endearing quirk.

My problem with all this is that it's fundamentally stupid. "Real men" don't act like this. Children do.

The flick's main concern is masculinity, but it has no understanding of masculinity.

It rings absolutely false because we in the audience know that this character is nothing but a garden variety jerk.

If De Niro himself had more charm or charisma, it might have worked.

An actor of greater subtlety or grace could have stuck in some much needed irony, but dumb old De Niro just keeps pounding away at the idiotic jokes like the hammerhead he is.

Sorry, but De Niro isn't my alpha male ideal.

If he were my grandpa, he'd be Lonely Grandpa.

Rating: 1/5


VENUS by LISA TWANG

Not even the sight of Efron's bare buns can save this movie.

No doubt they are very toned buns, matched by his flawless abs, pecs and cherubic face.

But they are just not worth the trouble of sitting through this poor excuse of a film.

I've enjoyed Efron's post-High School Musical movies, such as 17 Again, because he has an easy boy-next-door charm. But his Jason is a real stick-in-the-mud who rattles on about LLP agreements and worries about wrinkling his khakis.

If I met a guy like him in real life, I might actually kick him in the rear, no matter how luscious it is.

It's also a shame that a veteran actor like De Niro is reduced to playing such a dumbed-down character.

I cringed when he had to yell lines like "Party till you're pregnant!" and dry-humped everything in sight.

De Niro deserves a lot better, and for that matter, so does Efron.

Women watching this will suffer even more because of the terrible sexism at play. The female characters are either virgins or whores, and at no point do you actually feel like they are living, breathing human beings. Just bodies to model bikinis and squirt sunblock on.

Spring-break movies are shallow by definition, but they can be light-hearted and funny too. This is just lame and painful.

Rating: 1/5

 


THE CONSENSUS: You’ll need a shower after to get rid of the residual filth, so avoid Dirty Grandpa at all costs

MoviesZac EfronUncategorisedcomedy