De Niro good in bad ‘Grandpa’
Robert De Niro is one of the best actors that American cinema has ever produced, and he has made some amazing films that will be remembered, at least until humanity has been replaced by cyborgs that can’t understand what was Jake LaMotta’s problem, anyway. But De Niro has also made some mediocre films and some outright stinkers, such as “Being Flynn” (2012) and “Analyze That” (2002). Obviously, the man likes to work.
Yet when the books are written, “The War with Grandpa” will have a special place in De Niro’s vast and varied cinematic legacy as the absolute worst movie he ever made.
Here’s the twist: He’s actually good in it, but it doesn’t help. In fact, the quality of De Niro’s acting might even make the movie worse, because it accentuates the contrast between what he’s doing and what’s happening all around him.
Based on a book by Robert Kimmel Smith, “Grandpa” stars De Niro as a retired architect and widower, who is depressed and spends most of his time staring out the window. His daughter (Uma Thurman), concerned about the man’s depression, invites him to move into her house, which she shares with her husband (Rob Riggle) and three children. He accepts.
The only problem, a seemingly minor one, is that the little boy, Peter (Oakes Fegley) — he’s starting sixth grade, so that would make him 11 — has to give up his bedroom. His parents inform him that he must be relocated to the attic.
Oh, but young Peter doesn’t want to relocate to the attic. No, he doesn’t want to one bit, and so declares war on Grandpa. He makes it his mission to make Grandpa’s life so unpleasant that the old fellow decides to move back to his former location.
Now somehow, someone apparently decided that this situation is funny, but exactly how this is supposed to be funny is in no way ever communicated to the audience. What we get, instead, is the spectacle of a repellent, nasty brat repeatedly tormenting an old man whose wife has just died.
The torment starts at waking Gramps up with loud music in the middle of the night and escalates to the destruction of property. Eventually, Grandpa is drawn out of passivity and goes on the attack, and so he starts destroying young Peter’s property in return, which is actually not Peter’s property at all. He’s a kid. Granddad essentially starts wrecking things that his daughter and her husband will ultimately have to replace.
It’s really a distasteful situation, not least because the audience is supposed to sympathize with the evil kid, at least in part. But the kid has the makings of a sociopath, even if the filmmakers don’t realize it.
Jane Seymour (“Live and Let Die”) shows up as a cashier at the local store, and Christopher Walken and Cheech Marin have a few scenes as Grandpa’s old friends. Add it up: Good people are in this movie. Throughout, De Niro plays Grandpa with depth and conviction, so that we can see that, clearly, Grandpa has been through something. He’s trying to keep it to himself. He’s intent on maintaining his dignity.
All this comes through in De Niro’s performance, but the movie is all about moments like this one: A jar of precious marbles spilling on to floor — as a result of the grandson’s prank — and De Niro steps on the marbles and does a pratfall. To appreciate the incongruousness of that, just imagine a remake of “Taxi Driver,” in which De Niro looks in the mirror and says, “Are you talking to me?” and then turns around and gets a pie in the face.
What makes it even worse is the insincere, obligatory pro-family message that you can see coming from a mile off. A drama about a genuinely psychotic 11-year-old — that could have been worthy of respect. But a nasty, creepy, awful thing with a taggedon saccharine finish, that’s not only contemptible. That’s not going to fool anybody.