Parental Guidance

Year 6, Day 245 - 9/2/14 - Movie #1,836

BEFORE: I know it may seem like I've resorted to watching films alphabetically, but that's not the case.  This film provides the "mortar" needed to get me to my next "brick" of films, which is the back to school chain.  Marisa Tomei carries over from "The Paper", and a different link will get me to where I need to be tomorrow.

THE PLOT: Artie and Diane agree to look after their three grandkids when their type-A parents need to leave town for work. Problems arise when the kids' 21st-century behavior collides with Artie and Diane's old-school methods.

AFTER: Well, it only took me 1,836 films over a six-year span to realize my mistake - when I started this project, I pitched myself completely wrong.  I took the tack of saying "I'd like to watch all the movies in my collection I haven't gotten too, plus some of the classics from the past" - which is fine, I suppose, but what I could/should have emphasized is that this is NOT a movie review site, because of who I am and what my experiences are. I remember saying to friends "This is not just about reviewing films," and some people probably still think, "Of course it is.  It's just a site where he reviews films."  (Not my friends, who more often say, "Are you still doing that movie thing?")

This is what, I believe, sets me apart - I've been working in the film industry (in one capacity or another) for 25 years.  Most people who work in film production don't have time to review films, and vice versa - in the same way that a food critic doesn't have time to be a chef, and a chef doesn't have time to review other restaurants.  (This is where "Top Chef" gets it right - they have some judges who are food critics, but Tom Colicchio is a chef, and they also frequently feature judges like Wolfgang Puck and Emeril LaGasse.)

I graduated from NYU's film program, and that meant I needed to satisfy three requirements - credits in screenwriting, production, AND criticism.  (OK, I admit I skated a bit on the production aspect, taking animation classes to satisfy that requirement - plus computer animation, and my grade in that class was a joke, but so was the NYU computer animation program at the time.)  I came into film school thinking I was going to be a director, and when I failed at that I turned immediately to producing - but that's good too, right?  Producers control the money, and then when you get the money, you get the power, Then when you get the power, then you get the women.  (apologies to "Scarface"). 

I know Roger Ebert was a screenwriter before he was a film critic, and I hesitate to compare myself to him because I've never written a good screenplay - but I think that put him in a unique position.  He could see the shortcomings of a script right away, because he knew the mechanics of writing one.  In the same way, I approach films a little differently, and a movie has to work a bit harder to impress me.  To most people, "Gravity" was a film about astronauts that took place in orbit, but to me it was a film shot with actors on a soundstage with CGI that looked like a damaged shuttle.

I would like to write a screenplay, but again, it's a question of time.  In order to have enough time, I'd need to quit one or both jobs, and then my income would take a dive.  Do I have enough of a financial cushion to support me for the 6-8 months I'm assuming it would take?   I also figured that I should watch a lot of films in preparation, to make sure my idea wasn't derivative, but also to get a feel for what works and what doesn't work.  I'm hoping that the process is akin to being a sculptor, you just start with a block of marble and chisel away anything that doesn't look like it's part of your figure.

But I'd like to think that the difference between me and your average film reviewer is like the difference between a meteorologist and a climatologist.  A meteorologist can tell you what the temperature might be tomorrow, but the climatologist can tell you that if we don't stop using fossil fuels, global warming will continue to get worse and we'll go past the tipping point.  A film reviewer can tell you whether a film is worth $11 of your money, but I can tell you that if Hollywood keeps churning out movies like "Parental Guidance", we need to start worrying about how entertained future generations will be.   (The meteorologist's advice is more useful day-to-day, because it tells you whether you should bring an umbrella with you, but you should also listen to the climatologist.)

With all that said, let's talk about "Parental Guidance", a film that wanted very badly to appeal to three generations at once, and that turned out to be an impossible task.  There are jokes about older people not understanding modern technology, as well as things like the X-Games, and there are jokes about today's kids who are overly coddled, not allowed to eat sugar or gluten, or allowed to watch horror movies or even hear curse words.  There are three kids in the film, and they suffer from three distinct "disorders" - one stutters and is shy, another has ADHD and an imaginary friend, and the other has "Hyper-Successful Activity", which I don't think is even a thing.  Seems to me she just wants to succeed, which seems like it should be encouraged rather than turned into a named disorder.

The third generation is today's parents, who are essentially caught in the middle.  They want better lives for their kids than the ones they got from their often-absent, clueless parents, so they've over-compensated and become over-protective, while removing all the stress (and fun, as it turns out) from their kids' routines.  What they've apparently forgotten is that stress builds character, adversity builds character, and nobody's life can be perfect.  The sooner you acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes and nothing's ever going to be perfect, the sooner we can move on and make some personal progress.

Now, any ONE of these generational sources of inspiration could have powered a film - but all three together makes for a muddled mess.  As a screenwriter, you need to pick a horse - focus your attention on one simple idea, and expand out from there.  Your story simply cannot be all things to all people.  "Parental Guidance" doesn't go far enough down any road to really get anywhere.  Every time it gets close to making a point, it sets up a roadblock and then travels in another direction.

For example, Billy Crystal's character is upset when he finds out that his grandson's Little League game has no outs, batters swing until they get a hit, and every game ends in a tie.  Since this makes it a pointless exercise, he's 100% right to protest and question the rules.  But before he can convince anyone of the rightness of his argument, a kid hits him in the nuts with a baseball bat.  It's a resort to slapstick, the cheapest of all comedy.  Sure, nut shots work, but at what cost?  It's still a crutch, or perhaps a distraction so people won't realize the film ALMOST made a point. 

Another example - one kid's having trouble with a bully, and it's the kid who also has trouble with his stutter.  The bad advice from his grandfather, to stand up for himself, leads to a fistfight, which takes place off camera.  It supposedly happened in an unusual way, but the audience doesn't get to see it.  But letting the situation devolve into a punch-out is not only uninspired, it's a lost opportunity for the kid to find his voice AND solve the bullying problem with some clever words at the same time.  Instead the kid has to assert himself on stage late in the film by calling a baseball game in the middle of a music audition, which makes no sense and is disrepectful to the musicians.  The movie spends most of its time telling us that kids need structure and discipline, then lets one of its characters act out in an unstructured, undisciplined way, and this is encouraged?  Mixed messages. 

Another example of missed comedy - the grandparents have to spend five days in a "smart house", one with some kind of A.I. that keeps track of the occupants, their schedules and all of the appliances.  Ah, I see where this is going - old people are frustrated by new technology, so here's the chance for things to go really, really wrong, right?  Nope, not even once - instead of a wrongly-pushed button leading to a laundry room full of foam, or dinner getting cooked in the dishwasher, the only "hilarious" result is that the house calls the grandfather "Fartie" instead of "Artie".  What a waste - but because the kids' father designed the tech, and he's off accepting an award for its success, nothing can really go wrong with it.  This isn't just a comedy roadblock, it's an entire highway shut down.

The kid's mother is written all haphazardly as well - she's supposed to go away with her husband, but she really doesn't, because she needs to be around to see how badly her parents are messing up, and to get a faceful of cake (more slapstick, great...).  She's also given a chance to explain herself to her parents - we might really understand why she's over-protective if she could just say to her father, "You were always at work at the ballpark, and never there for me." But she can't quite do it, so this goes unsaid.  Again, we need to have character acknowledge their problems if they're ever going to get past them.  And as an audience member, I shouldn't have to fill in the unspoken gaps.

Instead the film just sort of shrugs and points out that the last generation didn't really know how to raise kids, and due to over-compensating, the pendulum's swung too far the other way and the current generation doesn't really know either, and isn't that hilarious?  Well, no, in fact it's kind of sad, and sad turns out to be the opposite of funny.  The fact that the grandparents "old school" methods of parenting manage to cure nearly all of the kids' disorders seems to indicate that they're more right about things than the parents are, but how we got there is quite fuzzy, it ends up not being something that can be measured or quantified.  So it's a wash.

OK, so since I don't have kids maybe I'm not part of the target market here, but that shouldn't matter, funny is funny.  I can still appreciate a funny film like "Parenthood", which covered much of this same territory and did it much better.  I used to baby-sit and I tried to be the cool babysitter, but this just led to two kids running wild, and me having to lie to their parents about their behavior if I wanted to get paid.  They really needed discipline and I was unable to provide it - so I've sort of been in this boat without procreating, and I learned that maybe parenting isn't my thing.  I'll stick with being an uncle, because I can probably be the "cool uncle".  A man should know his own limitations.

Also starring Billy Crystal (last seen in "America's Sweethearts"), Bette Midler (last seen in "Scenes From a Mall"), Tom Everett Scott (last heard in "Mars Needs Moms"), Bailee Madison (last seen in "Just Go With It"), Joshua Rush, Kyle Brietkopf, with cameos from Gedde Watanabe (last heard in "Mulan"), Tony Hawk.

RATING: 3 out of 10 gluten-free recipes