InsidePulse Review – Grandma's Boy

Archive


Image courtesy of www.impawards.com

Director :

Nicholaus Goossen

Cast :

Linda Cardellini……….Samantha
Chuck Church……….Dan
Frank Coraci……….Cousin Steven
Allen Covert……….Alex
Peter Dante……….Dante
Heidi Hawking……….Barry’s love interest
Jonah Hill……….Barry
Shane Houston……….Video Gamer
Shirley Jones……….Grace
Shirley Knight……….Bea
Joe Koons……….Best Man
Jonathan Loughran……….Josh
Katherine Ann McGregor……….Mrs. K
Joel Moore……….J.P.
Kevin Nealon……….Simon Cheezle

It’s been said you judge the quality of a man by who he tends to associate himself with. Friendship is one of the many barometers of which a man’s character is oft-associated with, so it’s rather curious that the marked difference between Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller is their respective groups of friends. While both have many similarities from a cursory standpoint, as both Stiller and Sandler are average-looking Jews who have managed to parlay a great sense of humor into an “everyman” sort of comedic role that’s proven to be successful and profitable, it’s rather interesting to see whom both bring back as regular co-workers.

While Stiller is more of a neurotic comedian in the vein of Woody Allen and Sandler has a defined comedic style that follows the fine line between manic and depressive, their comedic cohorts mark the biggest difference between the two. Stiller’s crew rose up with him to the top over the years, mostly, and Sandler’s crew has gotten fame and fortune directly because of their association with the former SNL player.

Sandler’s crew has mainly consisted of associates from the glory years of Saturday Night Live in the mid to late 1990s. Rob Schneider and David Spade, as well as Chris Rock to a lesser extent, have gotten movies centered around them because of their famous pal as opposed to merely on their “talent” alone. Whereas the Stiller half of the equation consists of really talented guys who made their bones on the independent circuit (Vince Vaughn, Owen & Luke Wilson, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd), Sandler works with a crew that are regulars in his movies. Peter Dante, Jonathan Loughran and Allen Covert often have small roles alongside Spade & Schneider in Sandler’s movies, amongst them The Wedding Singer and Big Daddy. While Schneider and Spade have been featured prominently in their own movies, the rest of the crew now gets their crack at the big time with Grandma’s Boy.

Covert stars as Alex, a 36 year old video game tester who loses his apartment when his roommate uses Alex’s share on Asian hookers. Forced into living with his grandmother Lilly (Doris Roberts) and her two roommates Bea (Shirley Knight) and Grace (Shirley Jones), Alex has to adapt to living with the three women while finishing up work on a new game from the genius of J.P (Joel Moore) while enduring Bea’s insanity, Grace’s homophobic putdowns and a potential new love interest in Samantha (Linda Cardellini), a woman brought in by Mr. Cheezle (Kevin Nealon), Alex’s boss. What follows is a movie that is aimed at, and apparently written by, a thirteen year old.

Grandma’s Boy was produced by Sandler’s Happy Madison production company and aimed at the same core audience Sandler used to target back in the late 1990s. While Sandler’s taste in movies and comedy has matured in the decade or so that he’s been reigning at the box office, Grandma’s Boy is a throwback to an era where jokes about flatulence, drug use, and vague sex references were cutting edge. Even a film devoid of any sort of wit like Wedding Crashers has a certain sense about low-brow humor; it’s good in spurts but unless you’re in seventh grade it isn’t that funny. Nicholaus Goossen, whose previous work was a short dedicated to Sandler’s dog, mans the helm in his first real directorial debut and seems to have no idea what he’s doing. There’s a semblance of a story being told about a man adjusting to life back with his grandmother while trying to further himself in a rather unique career path but at the same time there are so many gags that are inserted to try and make the thirteen year old inside all of us laugh that the film falls off the track and crashes miserably.

There’s a lot of humor intended for the same sort of audience that enjoyed Napoleon Dynamite a year ago, as the characters are from the same sort that would populate that universe. These are the kinds of people we poke and make fun of, and Grandma’s Boy doesn’t give us any reason to cheer for them. There are no good points under the surface that we can see; these guys are dorks and are intended to be laughed at, not with. In the film’s final climactic moments, there isn’t a sense of victory or rejoice. It’s another scene with a group of characters that aren’t developed enough to be called one dimensional.

The film doesn’t seem to have a basic understanding of what type of humor it’s trying to use; while The Forty Year Old Virgin used homophobic commentary to a more intelligent purpose than expected in the genre, Grandma’s Boy uses it like a seventh grade boys basketball team would use the same material. It’s not funny, for the most part, and even the young adult inside is left screaming for some actual comedy to be inserted. This is the sort of project Adam Sandler would pass on nowadays, as his taste in film selection has gotten better in the years since Billy Madison, but it’s sad to see Covert in this manner. He’s had many good roles in Sandler’s films over the years, earning him some notoriety as well as bigger parts in other films, and it’s hard to see him using material that is no where near as funny as it could be. And it’s a shame, as Covert has some good gags and material buried in garbage.