Review of Dirty Grandpa (2016) by Maksim B — 27 Apr 2016

Dirty Grandpa is a polarizing R-rated comedy which tries to be cool, raunchy and scandalous without making any efforts to be at least partially smart or to give any chance to its leading actors to show actually some acting skills. Filled with drugs, sex and anti-gay gags, this is a wild Spring Break journey that works fine as an offensive college comedy, but ultimately fails as a movie.

Jason Kelly (Zac Efron) is a young, well-educated and soon to be very successful lawyer. One week before his wedding, his dragged down by his grandfather Dick Kelly (Robert De Niro) to Daytona for Spring Break. While the official reason is to re-unite Dick with an old military fellow of his, the truth is that the naughty and wild grandpa has totally different plans for his grandson. What follows is an endless streak of parties, bar fights, drugs abuse and a new re-discovered romance between Jason and his high-school love Lenore (Aubrey Plaza).

Needless to say, the story is bad and one will certainly ask himself/herself, why did Robert De Niro have to choose to participate in such a movie? An actor of his great caliber deserves at least a script and director much better than what Dirty Grandpa offered him. Nevertheless, if you do not take this into account and you are looking forward to the nasty, offending humor, college-type of entertainment and jokes, you may actually enjoy all the 102 minutes. There are some good, nasty laughs, but yet the vulgarity of the humor could probably shock you and disgust you.

If you are in the movie for a brainless comedy, filled with vulgar humor, drugs, alcohol and college-related fun, then Dirty Grandpa is an option. If you however are looking for a sort of a R-rated Jude Apatow-style of comedy, you will be disappointed, simply because in terms of content and story Dirty Grandpa is far away from the originality of most of the Apatow's movies.