Review of Dirty Grandpa (2016) by Danny L — 21 May 2016

This film constitutes the final nail in the coffin of De Niro's career, once considered to be America's greatest dramatic male thespian, and now nothing more than a pathetic crude clown, inserting himself into the kinds of 5th rate cornball comedies that even a younger Jerry Lewis would have spurned lest he be made to seem excessively foolish.

One has to wonder whether or not De Niro is experiencing some form of pre-senile dementia, but medics should examine him extensively to determine if he suffered permanent brain damage in his lead role as a boxer in "Raging Bull.".

For the protection of his seriously ruined reputation, De Niro should announce retirement ASAP from any further acting assignments. Every appalling new film appearance makes a mockery of what he once happened to be and, whereas there was a time when young actors would take tremendous pride in appearing in a De Niro film, now it is genuinely a stain of disgrace to perform next to this tragic and badly damaged figure.

As for the film itself, the really lamentable thing is that, buried beneath much of the excruciating, dopey, cornball, there are some brilliant and politically incorrect concepts; in a much more talented director's hands, they could have manifested a far better result. It can be discerned that, within the original screenplay, there are some very provocative, hysterical, ideas that likely inspired the producers to tackle the project in the first place. Unfortunately, those same producers chose the wrong director in the worst way, a fellow whose singular ineptitude in transposing script to film is less than amateur. Furthermore, those same producers chose the wrong actor (De Niro) as lead character, primarily on account of his once iconic stature in cinema that, to reiterate, is in full decline. There are certain types of roles that cinematic icons should avoid like the plague because, in their performance, they provoke an extremely negative audience reaction, a confluence of horror, revulsion, and abject despair for the state of contemporary cinema; it is those kinds of angry audience reactions any smart comedy never wants to elicit.

Add all these factors together and the net result is an "entertainment" that is the equivalent of taking a lengthy bowel movement and watching the excrement drop slowly into the toilet.