BEFORE: Today was something of an American holiday, even if you didn't know it. It was unofficially "The Day to Go Grocery Shopping to Buy Snacks for Super-Bowl Sunday" Day. I just have to shop a week early for a good selection, if I wait until the Thursday or Friday before, I'll get stuck with bargain-brand snacks, and that just won't do, it would be un-American. So I got some potato chips, salsa, queso dip, tortilla chips, pretzels, cubed cheese, sliced salami, onion dip, and some frozen potato skins with bacon and cheese on them. My wife will pick up some little smoked sausages and pepperoni, and we'll be all set. It's a good thing we're not planning on having any guests over, or we'd need more food.
Robert De Niro carries over again from "Joy", and this will be the last I see of him, at least for a while. (I think, but then again, I never know)
THE PLOT: Right before his wedding, an uptight guy is tricked into driving his grandfather, a lecherous former Army Lieutenant-Colonel, to Florida for spring break.
AFTER: I'm a little embarrassed after the fact for watching this one, because it's so crude and so dumb, but since I need the link to tomorrow's film, I can't exactly claim that I didn't watch this. I throw myself on the mercy of the court and beg for forgiveness.
This film is part of that trend of "crude behavior" pictures, which got a boost from "The Hangover" and "Bridesmaids" and is still playing out - maybe it will never end, and just keep on going, but at some point, I figure enough has got to be enough. Because a film that starts with a grandson walking in on his grandfather pleasuring himself while watching a porno, the day after his wife's funeral, where can it possibly go from there? Straight into the gutter, mostly.
The funniest bits are probably the gags about the Florida legal system, the way that Jason, the grandson, keeps getting arrested for one misunderstanding after another, and has to spend time in jail while the character who we know is a drug dealer gets to leave jail whenever he wants. From everything we've heard about Florida over the last few years, this is almost too close to reality to be funny, though.
The rest is the grandfather getting Jason into one mishap after another, under the auspices of getting down to Daytona and getting laid, for the first time in years. But this premise doesn't even work, because even with the lies that he tells and his smooth personality, the Spring Break crowd isn't exactly full of girls looking to sleep with a 70-year-old. So the script invents one, but that's really a cheat, because girls like that simply don't exist. (Not unless that 70-year-old is a billionaire, but that's not the case here.)
And Jason's story is very cookie-cutter - like who can't tell that by pitching him as severely uptight at the start of the road trip, and someone who gave up on his artistic dreams to get a law degree, that interacting with the girl he went to school with (who's conveniently the best friend of the girl who wants to bed his grandfather) that this whole road trip is going to change his whole attitude about life and love? I mean, come on, it's all just way too obvious, when it isn't all being way too crude.
On top of that, the character of the cousin who appears to have no social boundaries seemed thrown in, his storyline went nowhere, and this is also the film where De Niro raps, says the "N" word in that rap, and somehow knows all the names of the members of the Wu-Tang clan. I'm not buying that.
Also starring Zac Efron (last seen in "Neighbors"), Aubrey Plaza (last seen in "The To Do List"), Zoey Deutch, Julianne Hough (last seen in "Rock of Ages"), Dermot Mulroney (last seen in "The D Train"), Jason Mantzoukas (last seen in "The Night Before"), Adam Pally (also last seen in "The To Do List"), Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Michael Hudson, Jack Picking, Mo Collins, Henry Zebrowski (also last seen in "The D Train"), Brandon Mychal Smith, with a cameo from Danny Glover (last seen in "Maverick").
RATING: 3 out of 10 chugged beers
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