Grandma's Boy (2006)
Directed by Nicolaus Goosan
Written by Barry Wernick, Alan Covert, Nick Swardson
Starring Alan Covert, Linda Cardelini, Kevin Nealon, Shirley Knight, Shirley Jones, Doris Roberts
Release Date January 6th, 2006
Published January 6th, 2006
Just how powerful is Adam Sandler in Hollywood? Apparently, in the wake of the release of the comedy Grandma's Boy, he can pick guys off the street and by attaching his name to them, get them on the big screen behind and in front of the camera.. The new stoner comedy Grandma's Boy is directed by former Adam Sandler gofer--okay, "production assistant"--Nicholaus Goosan and stars Sandler's entourage of worshipful friends, led by the charisma vacuum, Alan Covert. Grandma’s Boy is a stunning example of both the continuing devolution of the modern comedy genre and the star power of the only superstar ever created by SNL.
The Adam Sandler cult of personality--including Allen Covert, Peter Dante, Nick Swardson and former SNL chums Kevin Nealon, Rob Schneider and David Spade--come together to make Grandma's Boy, a fatally dull exercise in Sandler-style humor that fails to rise to even the low standards of one of Sandler's own films.
Allen Covert stars in Grandma's Boy as Alex, a 36-year-old stoner and video game tester who gave up the yoke of an accounting gig for life spent playing XBox with teenagers. When his stoner roommate gets him kicked out of his apartment, Alex is forced to move in with his grandmother Lilli (Doris Roberts, Everybody Loves Raymond) and her two roommates, doddering pill popper Bea (Shirley Knight) and foul mouthed, sex-obsessed Grace (Partridge Family star Shirley Jones).
At work, Alex and his even more arrested-development pal Jeff (Nick Swardson), a 20-something, footy pajama wearing mama's boy who sleeps in a race car bed, are testing the latest alien shoot-em-up videogame for a company called Brainasium. Kevin Nealon plays their stoner, vegan, boss who hires the super hot Sam (a slumming Linda Cardellini) to be Alex and Jeff's supervisor.
Alex has a rival at work, a game creator named J.P. (Joel Moore, Dodgeball) who, like Alex, develops a quick crush on Sam. J.P, however, is no threat, as his proclivity for dressing like Neo from the Matrix and speaking in the voice of a robot when nervous or angry prevents him from much of any social interaction. The plot, such as it is, kicks in with Alex having created his own video game but being a shiftless, pothead layabout he does nothing about it until his idea is stolen. Then, in a requirement of the film's plot and title, only his grandma can step in to save him.
That is the story (or at least what passes for a story) that propels Grandma's Boy toward an ending. However, this is not a movie that is concerned with plot. Rather, drop the 'l' and you get what the real subject of Grandma's Boy, getting super high. I have no problem with that, but don’t make a movie if your only idea is to get high and play video games. Just stay home and do that. As a ‘movie’ Grandma's Boy is a stoner movie with all of the stoner cliches of munchies, morons, and a monkey. The monkey is actually a carryover from Adam Sandler’s movies as he requires a funny animal bit in all of his movies, regardless of whether it's funny or not.
The actors in Grandma's Boy are obviously Adam Sandler's comic B-team and I imagine behind the scenes, this group of friends are a riot. On screen, I am at a loss to see why they are appealing. Covert and the rest of this cast have little to nothing original or funny to say or do. It’s as if Sandler owed a friend with a screenplay a favor and then realized that even he had a standard he could not drop below. Instead, he handed the script to Covert and tricked a studio into letting his buddies make a movie.
Poor Shirley Jones. The former mama Partridge humiliates herself in the role of a slutty older woman who claims to have slept with Charlie Chaplin and Don Knotts on different occasions. In Grandma's Boy, Jones thinks she is in on the joke of her character being a sex mad older woman but in fact she is the subject of the joke in which she seduces Nick Swardson's manchild Jeff. Grandma’s Boy is a movie made by people who think that just the idea of a person over 60 having sex is somehow funny.
The only actor to survive the carnage of Grandma's Boy is the lovely Linda Cardellini. Far more skilled than the "actors" she has chosen to work with, Cardellini gamely throws herself into the stoner fun of Grandma's Boy. However, when it comes down to it, you can tell Cardellini is not inhaling the fumes. Cardellini picks up her paycheck and escapes the fray of Grandma's Boy by affecting an above-it-all air.
That Grandma's Boy did not go directly to the video store is a testament to Adam Sandler's clout and nothing more. That he does not even deign to cameo in Grandma's Boy and still manages to overshadow every aspect of the film. It says something, not anything good, about Sandler’s connection to his audience--the audience for Grandma's Boy likely loved Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison--and how his entourage of pals pretending to be actors are linked to him. Grandma’s Boy doesn’t exist without Sandler wielding his star power to get it made.
Fans of pot humor, old people having sex, and monkeys may find something to enjoy in Grandma's Boy, but for the other 98% of the movie going public there is nothing to enjoy about this Adam Sandler-less Adam Sandler flick.
