Dirty Grandpa, featuring Zac Efron and starring Robert De Niro as a dirty grandpa, opened over the weekend. To put it kindly, it was not especially well-received. As of this writing, it has received just four positive reviews out of 61 total reviews, as tabulated by RottenTomatoes. One of those “positives” was a two out of four star review, another a 2.5. I didn’t see it, so I can’t weigh in, but a lot of the time, the joy I get watching gross-out comedy is nothing compared to the joy I get reading cranky critics describe gross-out comedy. Which is how this feature, Plot Recreated with Reviews was born. Eventually, I discovered I could piece together an entire film I hadn’t seen, using nothing but expository sections (no analysis!) from reviews.
Dirty Grandpa, Recreated with Reviews
Act 1
We first meet Dick Kelly (De Niro) at his wife’s funeral, where he notices that his once-spirited grandson, Jason (Zac Efron), has grown into a joyless lawyer with the usual castrating fiancee… (Newsday)
…a Stepford nightmare named Meredith (Julianne Hough, strangling in pastel sweater sets)… (EW)
…who we know is prickly because she keeps a fruit dish filled with artichokes on the kitchen counter. (ThePlaylist)
She’s obsessed with money and status and punctuality and hates fun and excitement and her fiancé’s happiness. In one scene, she calls Jason 37 times in a single night when he doesn’t answer his phone; in another she nags him until he picks the tie color for his groomsmen in the middle of his grandmother’s funeral. (ScreenCrush)
Though the wedding is days away, Dick pressures Jason into driving him from Atlanta to Boca Raton. Ah, but that’s a ruse: Dick’s real destination is Daytona Beach, where he hopes to find a nubile Spring Breaker to sleep with — and, perhaps, convince Jason to loosen his own collar. (Newsday)
Jason — a corporate lawyer who works for his dad, David (Dermot Mulroney) — reluctantly agrees to this task, only to just about throw up on one of his many polo shirt-and-khaki outfits when he goes to pick up Dick and finds the man pleasuring himself to porn, and casually referring to his climax as “a No. 3.” (Variety)
The sight of De Niro naked in a recliner, ’bating to porn, his Malcolm Gladwell obscured by a Kleenex box, “Austin Powers”-style. It’s not the dirtiest thing the actor has done onscreen; in Bernardo Bertollucci’s 1976 epic “1900,” he and Gerard Depardieu received an actual, real double handie from the same actress. (Metro)
Act 2
So the two of them jump in Meredith’s pink Mini Cooper—which Dick refers to alternately as “a giant labia,” “a tampon,” and, somewhat less creatively, “your vagina”… (EW)
…and a “dildomobile.” (THR)
Constantly deriding Jason as a “lesbian” and bombarding him with pun-based invectives about his lousy performance as a “wingman,” Dick is over-the-top inappropriate. (Variety)
“Who does your taxes, H. and R. Cockblock?” De Niro asks Efron. He continues by making a salacious play on the name “Jack Nicklaus,” putting a D where the N customarily is. (RogerEbert.com)
“looks like Abercrombie f*cked Fitch.” (Slant Magazine)
The duo first stop at a golf course, where Dick begins his film-long habit of poking Jason in the ass with objects and/or his finger, all while espousing his consuming need for coitus. (Variety)
Grandpa’s out to – and I’m quoting here – “f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck.” (Time Out)
A handy opportunity presents itself when Jason has a chance run-in at a roadside diner with a cute former photography classmate named Shadia (Zoey Deutch)… (EW)
…who he knew in college back when he was still cool and hadn’t sold out his dreams of becoming a photographer for a career in corporate law. (ScreenCrush)
They had a college photography class together, but she’s still in college while he’s already working as a lawyer at his dad’s firm? (ScreenCrush)
Her hot-pantsed friend Lenore (Aubrey Plaza), it turns out, really digs old dudes—like, sexually. In her vagina. (EW)
When Lenore and Shadia mention they’re headed to Daytona Beach for Spring Break, grandfather and grandson ditch their itinerary to pursue the women and their friend Bradley (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman), who is mostly present to be mocked by Richard for being both black and gay. (ScreenCrush)
Late Second Act Montage
Dick isn’t a person, just a checklist of bad behaviors like drinking, smoking and (especially) cursing. His sole function is to shock us, and he’ll do or say anything — racist jokes, gay slurs, exposing himself — to get a laugh. (Newsday)
Old people are horny! Smoking crack by accident is hilarious! So are swastikas and prison rape and pedophilia! (EW)
De Niro rants about smegma… (The Wrap)
…nuzzles his penis on a pillow for a practical joke… (EW)
…saying words like “butt-f—”… (ScreenCrush)
…introducing his grandson as a “retard” who likes to rape. (ScreenIt)
His character nostalgically remembers his late wife, saying “we also tried anal every five years.” (THR)
Jason awakens from a drug stupor on a beach wearing nothing but a stuffed animal, which a random boy passing by desperately wants to hug, which leads the boy’s father to mistakenly assume Efron is sexually molesting his son. (ScreenCrush)
You’ll get to see Efron’s butt a lot. (EW)
[Efron] spends most of the movie naked and/or with penises drawn on his face. (New Republic)
After repeatedly belittling Bradley for being both gay and black, Dick heroically rescues him from homophobic bullies (Variety)
He also says the N-word, although not before politely asking his new friends, a group of black toughs who he had previously beaten to a pulp, if it’s ok. (THR)
There are also jokes made about humans ejaculating dogs, a drug dealer using an ice cream truck to sell drugs to elementary and middle-school children, an uncle with throat cancer who has to use a voice box. (ScreenIt)
The film takes Dick to see an old pal, Stinky (Danny Glover), at a retirement home. There, Stinky is found sitting in front of a television shouting, “Yeah, f*ck ’em up, Alf!” (SlantMagazine)
[The] terminally ill man crochets a lewd picture of two people having sex and then asks De Niro to leave his grandson with him for the last month of his life so he can perform repeated acts of oral sex on him until he dies. (ScreenIt)
Dick performs a karaoke rendition of Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day” to impress the college student he’s hellbent on sleeping with. (LA Weekly)
Aubrey Plaza commanding as foreplay that Robert De Niro, as the grandfather of the title, “Tell me the buttons on your remote control are so small you can’t find Fox News.” (LAWeekly)
“I want you to tear me open like a social security check.” (NewRepublic)
Act 3
Before you know it, Jason lets his freak flag fly, winding up on a beach naked with penises shaped in the form of a swastika drawn on his face (cue the embarrassing FaceTime call with his fiancée and her elderly rabbi). (THR)
Heart-to-heart chats between Dick and his fuming grandson arrive on cue, as if in a straight family comedy. (New York Times)
The ultimate message, of course, is supposed to be that Jason just has to loosen up to realize he needs to lose the soulless job and shrew fiancee and discover his real destiny, while Dick gets his late-life dreams fulfilled by a drunk twentysomething with daddy issues. (EW)
“Dirty Grandpa” might also mark the first time in cinematic history that the only nudity in an R-rated spring break comedy is an old man’s penis. (ThePlaylist)
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Oddly, I feel like I should see this now.
[Newsday, THR, LA Weekly, New Republic, EW, GlobeAndMail, TheWrap, ThePlaylist, Metro, ScreenCrush, RogerEbert, Slant, ScreenIt]
Vince Mancini is a writer and comedian living in San Francisco. A graduate of Columbia’s non-fiction MFA program, his work has appeared on FilmDrunk, the UPROXX network, the Portland Mercury, the East Bay Express, and all over his mom’s refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook, find the latest movie reviews here.