Respond to these rapid questions in our Dirty Grandpa quiz and we will tell you which Dirty Grandpa character you are. Play it now.
The strangest dream occurred to me a couple of weeks ago. This movie, “Dirty Grandpa,” was the talk of the town in my dream, according to my memory. Apparently—I didn’t see any of the movie in my dream, only had conversations with people about it—the Robert De Niro/Zac Efron/Aubrey Plaza raunch comedy didn’t do that thing that studio-produced raunch comedies do, which is to take things only so far and then stop there. No. In my dream, “Dirty Grandpa” was causing a stir because it reached levels of outrageousness comparable to those of John Waters and Harmony Korine. The sex scenes between De Niro and Plaza, for example, were on the level of “Last Tango in Paris” in terms of explicitness.
Until then, you’ll just have to take my word for it that I had this dream, which I truly did have. The question is, WHY did I have this dream in the first place. Considering that I’m the author of a book on De Niro, I’m frequently asked what I think of his various career moves (okay, not all that frequently, but more frequently than would be the case for a guy who hadn’t written a book on De Niro). So it’s possible that the dream represents my desire to see De Niro return to the stage where he could surprise his audiences with audacious performances. Or it’s possible that I’m just a pervert who wants to see Aubrey Plaza naked in public. I really don’t know. Even though the non-oneiric “Dirty Grandpa” does not feature Aubrey Plaza naked (although she comes much closer than one might expect), the film is, as in my dream, a genuine envelope-pusher that defies categorization. It is unrelenting in its ugliness. Roofie-ing, crack smoking, child molestation, jailhouse rape, graphic depictions of penises in the shape of a swastika being displayed to a rabbi, and other topics are the subjects of its indifferently crafted and callously executed jokes. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a John Waters or Harmony Korine movie.
A film by John Waters or Harmony Korine is the only one in which the jokes are either funny or pointed. They are not present here. The film’s road trip begins with De Niro’s horny patriarch attempting to charm some ladies on a golf course; when he is thwarted by his uptight soon-to-be-married lawyer grandson Efron, he responds with a slew of puns based on the term, if you’ll excuse the pun, “cock blocker.” “Which Cockblocks handle your tax preparation, H. and R. Cockblock?” De Niro approaches Efron and asks him a question. Further, he parodies the name “Jack Nicklaus” by inserting a D where the N would normally be found, creating a salacious pun. It’s because they’re on a golf course, you understand? The fact that De Niro delivers these ludicrous insults with gusto, if not vehemence, does nothing to elevate them.
But you shouldn’t waste any more time and start this Dirty Grandpa quiz.
To make matters worse, the relentless barrage of this humor is occasionally punctuated with pointedly insincere homilies in which “dirty” grandpa De Niro attempts to encourage sellout grandson Efron to “Follow His Dreams,” further adding to the overall depressing atmosphere. The other way in which the film pushes the envelope is through a blatant display of contemptuous incomprehensibility. With his homophobic and racist outbursts, De Niro’s character, Dick, gives the impression of an elderly Travis Bickle; having been domesticated for forty or so years, Dick is now free to lash out, hurling epithets and venom across the state of Georgia to Daytona Beach. Take a wild guess as to who gets the worst of Dick’s snarky one-liners when he and Efron’s Jason run into Jason’s former college pal Shadia (Zoey Deutch, who here appears to be filling the function of “an Isla Fisher type”) and her oversexed pal Lenore (Plaza), as well as their gay African-American friend Bradley (Jeffrey Bower-Champion). Once the film takes a strange turn that veers close to the infamous “mind if we dance with your dates?” scene from “Animal House,” De Niro’s character suddenly becomes righteous in the ways of sexual tolerance, even as he’s humiliating a rougher black character in the process. When the previously mentioned roofie-ing gag (actually a variation thereof, with Xanax substituting for Rohypnol, if anyone’s counting) leads into a chugging-contest scene that is so incoherently edited that the joke, such as it is, has no payoff, the movie is deemed a failure. “They just didn’t care,” as the wisecracking robots on the television show “Mystery Science Theater 3000” used to say.
Dirty Grandpa Quiz
As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to find genuine laughs, to the point where it becomes laughable. I found myself giggling out of a sense of metaphysical embarrassment for everyone involved in the project, and eventually for all of humanity. The words “What is happening to our world?” are scrawled across the page of my notebook. The final scene with Plaza and De Niro in the latter character’s apartment contains some rather good one-liners, which I have to assume were concocted by Plaza in an improv situation because their verbal wit is so demonstrably superior to any other spoken joke in the film that the contrast is, once again, embarrassing to witness.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this Dirty Grandpa quiz.
During the early years of his Hollywood career, in the 1930s, the actor Bela Lugosi appeared in a number of landmark, and some would argue great, films. “Dracula” by Bram Stoker and “The Black Cat” by Ulmer are among the works on display. “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” Lugosi’s final film, was released in 1959 and is widely regarded as the worst film ever made. Movies like “The Godfather, Part II,” directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and “Raging Bull,” directed by Martin Scorsese, are among the career highlights of De Niro. During the intervening years, he has appeared in an unfathomable number of extremely bad films. But what about this? It’s possible that this is his own “Plan 9.”
For more personality quizzes check this: Risen Quiz.
