The War with Grandpa
Director: Tim Histle (holy crap, this guy helped write SpongeBob)
Writer: Tom J. Astle, Matt Ember, Robert Kimmel Smith (book author)
Starring: Robert De Niro, Oakes Fegley, UMA THURMAN (THE BRIDE), Rob Riggle, Laura Marano, Christopher Walken
Reason for watching: Date night/getting out of the house/actually support movie theaters who need a bailout
Number of times I’ve watched it: First time viewing
***
I understand why people aren’t going to the movies. Separately, I understand know why recent theatrical releases aren’t doing well financially. Because the majority of these releases (Tenet aside, relax Christopher Nolan stans) are not exactly of high quality or have had high financial investment in them. There’s a reason why Wonder Woman 1984 keeps getting pushed back, and it’s not because the studio doesn’t trust Patty Jenkins. THEY WANT THEIR MONEY. But when you have a movie that was not made for the money, you can kind of go for it and just make something wacky and not worry about the monetary results. And that is exactly what The War with Grandpa does. It goes for it.
Let’s get a quick plot summary out there. Grandpa (Robert De Niro) is having some struggles living alone so he moves in with his daughter’s (UMA THURMAN) family. He takes his grandson Peter’s (Oakes Fegley) room, who responds by declaring war on his grandfather until he can get his room back. Now, this is a “family” movie (my least favorite genre), so my expectations are low. When a genre is aimed at keeping kids from wiggling too much and the parents engaged enough to not order a drink from the theater bar, I’m not usually looking forward to the experience. But I’ll give it that much, I was engaged the whole time. The slapstick humor and pranks are funny and don’t gross you out too much. One of the more interesting pranks involves Grandpa hacking Peter’s Minecraft-knock-off account and destroying the world Peter was building for years. The jokes land from time to time. And generally, no one does anything to make me roll my eyes so hard they fall out of my head.
To be fair though, low standards being exceeded doesn’t automatically make something good. I had low expectations for the 2019 version of Cats; those expectations were met. That doesn’t mean I liked it. The tension between the characters seems unnecessary and overblown. Essentially the “war” is over by the second act when Grandpa and his friends throw Peter’s bully into a dumpster behind school and when Peter and Grandpa go on an illegal fishing trip together. There was also some wasted opportunity to flesh out Grandpa’s sadness over the loss of his wife. Plus the pacing is far too fast. I understand just trying to keep the kiddos laughing in the audience, but even kids need to breathe and slow down every once in a while. Plus we had two (COUNT THEM, TWO) separate scenes where Grandpa accidentally exposes himself to son-in-law (Rob Riggle). While not even the worst in-laws are deserving of that kind of flashing, no audience is deserving of seeing a naked, man butt. (I have few rules for critiquing movies, but one of them is that seeing any man’s butt is an automatic negative.) Close to the end of the movie I was leaning towards giving this movie a 4/10 score. It’s not offensive, but there are better family movies to sit down with the whole family. But then the barbecue/Christmas/birthday party happens. And my perspective changed.
Some background of this party, Peter’s little sister loves Christmas. So her birthday is Christmas-themed, so there’s tinsel, Tannenbaum’s, and even a Santa Claus (Christopher Walken) there. A cease-fire was called between Grandpa and Peter in an effort to preserve the sanctity of the sister’s birthday. But Peter doubts grandpa won’t try anything, and he rigs a car bag seat underneath Santa’s chair, believing his Grandpa will be Chris Cringle (Kris Kringle? I don’t know how to spell it). The Santa impersonator is shot into the air, concussing him on impact with the ground. He then staggers around, destroys the birthday cake, knocks over a table, and somehow uproots a tree, which falls into the house and destroys an upstairs room. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition? We got one for ya’.
But in the middle of the chaos. Grandpa sees the tree will fall on Peter and knocks him out of the way and lets it fall on him instead. De Niro is certainly past his athletic peak, but he gets the job done and saves Peter. The war and the movie come to an end after this turn of events. Peter and Grandpa put their differences aside and decide to live together in peace, and even begin fishing together frequently. It’s a nice touch for a movie to see characters bond in this kind of way after such hostility existed previously. So despite my hatred for this genre, I have to respect this movie for its guts and give it a decent-ish rating.
5/10
Until I see another one.
PS - How did this movie get Uma Thurmond? She hasn’t done anything of note since Movie 43. And that is a movie you should not see for any reason.