Posted: 01/16/2006

Grandma’s Boy

(2006)

by Clint Fletcher

Say hello to the first kickass comedy of 2006. That’s right. Released in the worst week of the year and with extremely low expectations, Grandma’s Boy probably won’t be a box office success, but it sure is one hell of a funny ride.

I’m sure your first thought is ‘Fletch, have you gone insane? The previews blew!’ And you are correct. But what sucked me in is the R-rated trailer featured on the internet. With an impressive number of filthy jokes, a glimmer of hope began to shine for the Happy Madison B-Squad. And thanks to the Film Gods, this sucker is loaded with clever material created by the guys that have played Adam Sandler’s on-screen friends for the past ten years. The first thing you need to know when going in to Grandma’s Boy is that there is absolutely no plot. The film doesn’t have bad structure as much as it has no structure. It goes nowhere fast and then some. But this doesn’t mean its not entertaining. Some of the funniest comedies of my generation have no plot. Remember Clerks, Clueless and the recent Waiting? All these films push plot and structure into the background and pull the jokes to the forefront.

Allen Covert stars as Alex, a video game tester who is forced to move in with his grandma after getting kicked out of his apartment by landlord Rob Schneider. After that, Alex spends most of his time trying to get his grandma and her old-ass roommates away from the TV so that he can do some work. After that I really lost track of what the film was about’ or maybe I didn’t. Maybe its just about nothing. Wait! I remember what its about! Smoking pot. Yes kids, this is a pot head movie. But don’t worry. The flick never falls into the ‘only pot heads will get it’ category with Half Baked and How High. There are plenty of jokes for the clean and sober to enjoy too. Now that we’ve covered the screenplay, lets move on to the acting. There’s a reason why Covert has been stuck as Sandler’s wingman- he can’t act for shit. He’s tolerable when he plays stupid, stereotypical characters like the gay guy in Big Daddy or the pervert in Mr. Deeds. But the script calls for Covert to play it straight and this he cannot do. Thank God he’s got some back-up in the form of comedian Nick Swardson who steals the show every chance he gets. Throw in a few hilarious nerds, a smoking hot (no pun intended) Linda Cardellini (from ER) and the classic Doris Roberts and you’ve got yourself a decent cast. None of these people will ever win any Oscars (except maybe Cardellini), but they get the job done.

Now let’s move on to the negative. Every pot head movie has a downside and its always the same element- lame, random jokes that characters say or perform when they’re high. For example’ there’s a character in the film named Dante. Dante is the pot head that supplies everyone else with what they need. Whenever we see Dante, he’s always hanging out with an African tribesman and plotting to buy wild animals to guard his house. The first is a lion, then a monkey, then an elephant. All of them wreak havoc on Dante’s life, especially the monkey who apparently knows Karate. This is the kind of shit I’m talking about. This stuff isn’t funny, its just random and stupid. I loved Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, but I rolled my eyes instead of a joint when I saw H and K riding a speeding cheetah through the forest. Moments like these are only supposed to entertain the most heavy of weed smokers to give them that ‘this is what its like to be high’ you know what we’re talking about’ feeling. But all these scenes negate themselves when getting high makes everything funny anyway. If all these little druggies are coming to the movie high, they’re going to laugh at everything, so there’s really no need for such randomness in the script. Speaking of weird, there are a number of characters that come off as just downright bizzare, such as crazy JP who talks and walks like a robot or the hippie Kevin Nealon. Alex also has a roommate that is so old and senile that she walks around aimlessly spouting things like ‘moths taste yummy.’ Perhaps if the actual writers (Covert being one of them) would lay off the pot during the writing process, we could avoid situations like these.

Nevertheless, I say Grandma’s Boy is destined to become a cult classic. I won’t waste my time telling you to go see it on the big screen though. There are much more important films to see this time of year (it didn’t even break the top ten). But definitely add it to your rental list if you dig R-rated comedies. And its by far the best Happy Madison movie of the decade.

Clint Fletcher is an independent filmmaker and film critic.

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