The War with Grandpa (Film Review)

PLOT: After having to give up his bedroom to his grandfather and forced to live in the attic, Peter decides to wage a war of pranks with grandpa in hopes he will yield the room. Turns out grandpa is also a little bit crazy, and the two go head-to-head in a war that is bound to be bad for everyone.

REVIEW: Simply looking at the poster for THE WAR WITH GRANPA is enough to make you assume it would be among the worst movies you’ll watch all year. The visual of a slightly serious, mostly disinterested Robert De Niro next to a dumbfounded 12-year-old (Oakes Fegley) – both with makeup under their eyes that make them look more like pretend football players and less like pretend soldiers – with the tagline “Old school vs. new cool” is enough to make the best day turn into a wash. However, you should never judge a book by its cover, and there’s no shame in giving any movie a shot. That being said, I have seen THE WAR WITH GRANDPA, and after getting my first-hand experience can assure you it lives up to its worst advertisements in virtually every way and is bad enough to make even the children its geared towards wonder where the hell their time went.

Directed by Tim Hill (ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS, HOP), and written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember (based on the book by Robert Kimmel Smith), GRANDPA harkens back to that age when we for some reason thought movies centered on psycho children tormenting adults was a good idea. The child here is Peter (Fegley), who is rather upset that he has to give up his rather ordinary bedroom to his grandfather, Ed (De Niro), who is coming to live at home with his family after proving too senile and generally old (being a bad driver, and such) to live on his own. Again, because he’s a little monster, Peter feels like the best way to go about getting back what he thinks is his is by going to “war” with his grandpa, pulling a series of mean pranks that are deeply unfunny and boarder along dangerous. However, in equally unbecoming fashion, Ed decides to indulge this little Damien by being equally destructive, resulting in a family tussle that probably should result in everyone going to therapy.

While I have no idea how the book tackles its story, I can only say the plot of the movie progresses like a 20-minute episode of a poor Nickelodeon show stretched across 90 excruciating minutes. Across it all, the only attempts at humor are low-hanging fruit moments that show just how old Ed is (He likes the newspaper! What is this confounding screen device!?), crass jokes aimed at one member of Peter’s friend group, or the litany of pranks that couldn’t have possibly passed for humor in the early drafts and flunk on arrival in execution. Through it all, Peter is a charmless, nigh-vacant menace who never gets the timeout he deserves and is certainly the furthest from "new cool" I can imagine. This is no slight against Fegley, who proved his chops in the excellent PETE’S DRAGON a few years ago, and definitely gets props for simply going toe-to-toe with a talent like De Niro from scene to scene. If he isn’t able to take the character beyond his constant whining its because there’s nothing in the script for him to work with. I’m sure he had plenty of fun on set, but even at a young age, he’s capable of a lot more.

Of course, the same goes for De Niro, who recently did some of his best work in ages with THE IRISHMAN. Here he seems the minimum amount of game for whatever he’s thrown into, but even as far as a comedy would go, this is far, far below what he’s able to do. The script doesn’t even know how to properly treat Ed, a man who is shown as an absolute curmudgeon early on – picking fights with store clerks and being a grump about technology. But the moment he starts living with the family, he’s mister calm grandpa, whose chemistry with his youngest granddaughter (Poppy Gagnon) is undeniably adorable and a lone bright spot. Otherwise, he’s just an old man dealing with a new situation, which makes the reasons for why he would start feuding with his grandson all the more puzzling. Someone (I don’t know who) would make the case it’s to teach his grandson a lesson – and indeed he tries to lecture about the folly of war in very out of place moments – which still doesn’t make sense when he could just be a grown-ass adult and talk to the parents. But there is no room for charm or maturity here; only replacing various creams with other creams so that someone gets tricked into using said other creams.

Speaking of Peter’s parents – who are not directly told about the “war” – must still be the worst parents around for not noticing the small bits of mayhem around their house. As the mother, Sally, Uma Thurman is the performer trying the hardest here by going just over-the-top enough to try and get some manic-mother laughs, but not so far that she’s in a whole other movie. Then there’s Rob Riggle as the father, Arthur, horribly misused as the straight-man. An insanely gifted comic actor, he’s given virtually nothing to work with other than to demonstrate why he’s the best comedic shouter around when he’s forced into looking at a naked De Niro not once, but twice. As characters, they have nothing to contribute, and even when chaos eventually envelopes them – sending a tree through the house – all they care about is that their older teen daughter has a boyfriend. Thurman literally chases the boyfriend through a parking lot and nearly pulls a KILL BILL on him because he kissed their daughter. I don't know if this was supposed to be funny, but again, therapy is needed.

Sadly, other veteran actors are dragged into the muck, all Ed’s friends played by Christopher Walken, Cheech Marin and Jane Seymour. Walken plays a character who is trying desperately to seem hip and cool by showing off all his gadgets and saying things like “epic”, to the point where it’s almost too absurd to not find a little entertaining. During a dodgeball game between the old crowd and Pete and his friends, you have the likes of these legends beaning children with rubber balls while jumping on trampolines. Had the direction had a bit more energy to it perhaps it would’ve been genuinely entertaining, but instead it’s pretty much a trainwreck you have to convince yourself is really happening with these very talented icons.

Instances like this and more scatter a 90-minute runtime I couldn’t stop checking until ultimately everyone realized the movie needed to end, so there’s some forced making up to schmaltzy music in the final 5-10 minutes. Could young kids like it? Throw a rock at anything available to them on the internet and you’ll find something a kid would like. With THE WAR WITH GRANDPA, I can imagine the attempts at humor to be below the sensibilities of most children, and by the end, even they may be saying that De Niro should be aiming a bit higher with his film roles.