Spring Breakers

There was a period of time in a galaxy long, long ago when Robert De Niro was a great actor.  In films ranging from “Mean Streets” to “Raging Bull” he solidified himself as the one true heir to Brando, a method maniac who was as audacious a screen presence as he was cunning chameleon.  But if one starts to look closely at his rather lengthy CV it becomes more apparent that starting in and around the late 90s he began tapping into auto-pilot and the brave and challenging roles became few and far between.  Maybe he was trying to appeal to a different audience or maybe he got paid better to work more and act less or maybe it was paycheck grabs for his Tribeca funding.  It all reminds me of when Joe McHale (“Community” TV show) somewhat randomly did an impression of DeNiro’s agent at a White House Correspondence Dinner.  He mimed like he was an agent picking up a phone simply saying “he’ll do it” which elicited both a laugh and a moment of sadness from the DeNiro fan who wrote this review.

“Dirty Grandpa” is fuel to the fire for McHale’s case in point and an excuse for one of cinemas reigning icons to take a paid vacation via Atlanta.  The film casts DeNiro as Dick Kelly, a former special forces soldier long since retired, who has just lost his beloved wife and decides to get his soon to be married and aspiring lawyer son Jason (Zac Efron “Neighbors”) to drive him from Georgia to Daytona Beach Florida where he can mourn.  Or so he says.  Once Jason, en route to pick his grandpa up for the trip, happens to catch him on the couch naked and masturbating to porn on his big screen, one gets the sense that Grandpa Kelly has a different kind of trip idea in store.  Yet “Scent of a Woman” this is not.

Grandpa Kelly as it turns out just wants to get as much drinking, cursing, and fornicating in as he can while occasionally stopping to dispense pearls of wisdom to his emotionally repressed grandson whom he fears is about to get married to a woman he doesn’t love and start a career he’ll hate.  Jason also begins to fall for a girl on the Daytona quest who was his lab partner back in college during a time when he had an affinity for photography (honestly I can’t make this stuff up).   At least that’s what sense of narrative I was able to conjure from this doomed enterprise which makes less sense as it goes.  

DeNiro is shamelessly playing a cartoon version of an elder Travis Bickle within a comedic context which is nowhere near as amusing as it may sound.  And Efron is stuck in the thankless part of petulant worrywart to which he’s naturally ill-suited.  Efron’s casting in “Neighbors” worked since he was able to embody the ripped torso of a frat boy king while also mocking the lunkhead persona that goes with it.  His presence can be lazily charming at best but he lacks the darting intelligence and nuance of say a Jesse Eisenberg or Joseph Gordon Levitt who could play the part of Jason in their sleep (in a much better film I would like to think).  Not that either actor is buoyed by the material in this case.  With little to no structure the movie devolves into a series of muddled vignettes where the filmmakers are doing what they can to make each progressive scene more outrageous than the first throwing credibility and coherence out the window completely.  By the time Efron turns in his bed to the image of a protruding penis at the edge of the frame I was ready to call it a night.

The supporting cast fails to make much of an impression either with Aubrey Plaza being the sole exception.  The “Parcs and Rec,” actress lends her acerbic wit where she can as a sultry spring breaker with eyes on DeNiro and she comes close to establishing an interplay with him throwing out lines like “tear me open like I’m a social security check” among the more memorable (which I imagine was the result of her own improv).  But even she gets wasted within the unnerving constraints of an unfunny film that doesn’t know what to do with anyone involved. 

“Dirty Grandpa” is the ultimate awful DeNiro vehicle that is a culmination of all the bad movies he’s been involved with over recent years ranging from “Rocky and Bullwinkle” to most anything “Fockers” related.  But I still have hope he can turn it around and come back since in the right project he can still deliver (his poignant and funny dare I say Oscar nominated turn in David O Russell’s terrific “Silver Linings Playbook” really wasn’t that long ago).  If nothing else he just needs to work with Scorsese again to get all the magic back.