J.P.: All I've ever cared about was video games and they made me a millionaire. So maybe I don't know what the Civil War was, or who invented the helicopter even though I own one, but I did beat The Legend of Zelda before I could walk. I'm thinking about getting metal legs. It's a risky operation, but it'll be worth it.
QUOTE: "As a short it could have emerged as inspired, but as a feature it feels tired, deflated, and far too familiar."
Ah, good old January. The holidays are over, it's cold outside, and the holiday/Oscar cinematic rejects slog their way into theaters. Such a specimen is Grandma's Boy, a film that would have been infinitely better off as a short subject high school project. But, the film is a product of Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production company, so we're guaranteed several things: fart jokes, masturbation, horny old women, weed, slackers, and Rob Schneider. I feel like I just gave the movie away.
35-year-old video game tester Alex (Covert) is forced to move in with his grandma, Lilly (Roberts), and her two roommates, Grace (Jones) and Bea (Knight), after his roommate blows all their money on hookers and after an embarrassing situation involving a female action figure, a bathroom, and co-worker Jeff's (Swardson) mom. The project at work is an X-Box game called Eternal Death Slayer 3 and it is the brainchild of J.P. (Moore), a game-designing prodigy who talks to himself in a robot voice. Brought in for the sake of a love interest is Samantha (Cardellini), who is responsible for making sure the game gets done on time. In his spare time, however, Alex is working on his own game that, I guess, he eventually wants to sell. He also smokes a lot of weed provided to him by Dante (Dante), an eccentric with a live-in friend from Zimbabwe and a yearning for a pet lion.
That's about it. The first half of the film garners several laughs, but by the second half is becomes readily apparent that the film has nowhere to go and really has no plot whatsoever. David Spade surfaces in a truly painful restaurant scene and doesn't even get as much as a smirk. Sandler favorite Kevin Nealon does his Happy Gilmore shtick with flimsy results. The film is really hoping that you find its bizarre characters endlessly entertaining, but well before J.P. has done his robot voice for the 97th time, the jig has been up and wrung of every laugh it was worth.
Allen Covert, who looks so much like Mel Gibson that it's actually scary, carries the film well with his deadpan delivery and adept reactions to the madness surrounding him. He has had small parts in twelve of fifteen Sandler comedies over the years, but with Grandma's Boy he shows some nice comedic timing and is finally given the spotlight, if that's what you want to call it. Doris Roberts is clearly above this kind of material, but she actually looks like she's having fun.
Those who never tire of the same Sandler-inspired antics over and over will find plenty to like in Grandma's Boy, but everyone else will be checking their watches even with the short 96 minute runtime. As a short it could have emerged as inspired, but as a feature it feels tired, deflated, and far too familiar.
By : Bill Clark (http://www.fromthebalcony.com/reviews/2006/06_grandmasboy.htm)
Source: rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating: 3
Director: Nicholaus Goossen Cast: Linda Cardellini, Allen Covert Screenplay: Barry Wernick, Allen Covert, Nick Swardson MPAA Classification: R (for drug use and language throughout, strong crude and sexual humor, and nudity)
With one part insulting condescension, two parts stupidity, and a final part unabashed heart, Grandma's Boy is another emblematic outing for Happy Madison Productions. The film orbits around the innately childish life of video game tester, Alex (Allen Covert), and the zany realisms of bunking with Grandma Lilly (Doris Roberts) and her two friends, Grace (Shirley Jones) and Bea (Shirley Knight). It's a tried and true formula: pitting one generation against another and witnessing the expected frenzy unfold. But Grandma's Boy attempts to do this honestly; with supposed truths about the young generation of gamers and the last generation's practical conventions butting heads. But the film rams itself headlong into stereotypes, defining each character with single, disgraceful traits, and misfiring its portrayal of gamers with slighting aloofness.
Video Games are an emerging art form. Where film infuses modicums of music, literature, and visual art to form its medium, video games try similarly with human interaction. And although they've, as of yet, failed to find a market outside of flurried violence and badly used language, I believe that eventually video games will heighten into another valid medium of art, with dimensional characters and fully realized storylines for gamers to experience. Grandma's Boy touted itself as the shining knight for these video games, and was marketed as the film to advocate they're presence in this generation's lives. Instead, Grandma's Boy presents its gamer audience with idiots and social misnomers posing as characters. The glazed over, desperately virginal, and socially misfit image of a video gamer is epitomized by this film. Grandma's Boy doesn't do gamers justice, but ignorantly condescends to them, offering only stereotypical characters written solely for the jokes they spew. And without any realistic subtext for these stereotypes, their jokes fall thankfully flat.
But for all the nonsensical ignorance the film spouts, its anti-hero, Alex, at least has a heart. It may be buried beneath multiple layers of hash, alcohol, and poorly laid sex jokes, but, unlike the rest of Grandma's Boy's characters, Alex could walk down the street without being forced into an insane asylum. There even lies a semi-heartfelt romance in between the two parts stupidity and one part insulting condescension. Samantha (Linda Cardellini), the development supervisor for Eternal Death Slayer 3, the game Alex is testing, sprouts some sympathy for Alex's embarrassing housing situation with Grandma Lilly. The two go out on a celebratory business dinner, accidentally get Grandma Lilly stoned, and launch a wild, drunken party at her house. The sparks eventually fly and our two uniquely believable characters find each others' lips. The scenes aren't especially inspired, but offer some refreshing solace from the rest of the film's static immaturity.
Is Grandma's Boy really all that bad? Well, no. In truth, it has its overtly funny moments, elevating it past other Adam Sandler production duds like The Hot Chick and The Longest Yard. But it doesn't have the strength to rise to the level of the great cinematic job portrayals like Sooper Troopers and Office Space. Grandma's Boy will fall flat with the critics and build a small, unfortunate following with twelve-year-old boys, leaving the rest of the gaming world to wait for its cinematic advocate, and also for the game ruining director Uwe Boll to be murdered in his sleep.
