The War with Grandpa
Directed by: Tim Hill
Written by: Tom J. Astle & Matt Ember - Based on the book by Robert Kimmel Smith
Starring: Robert De Niro, Oakes Fegley, Uma Thurman, Rob Riggle, Christopher Walken, Cheech Marin, Jane Seymour, Laura Marano, Juliocesar Chavez, Isaac Kragten, T.J. McGibbon, Poppy Gagnon, Colin Ford
Comedy/Drama/Family - 94 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 8 Oct 2020
Written by: Tom J. Astle & Matt Ember - Based on the book by Robert Kimmel Smith
Starring: Robert De Niro, Oakes Fegley, Uma Thurman, Rob Riggle, Christopher Walken, Cheech Marin, Jane Seymour, Laura Marano, Juliocesar Chavez, Isaac Kragten, T.J. McGibbon, Poppy Gagnon, Colin Ford
Comedy/Drama/Family - 94 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 8 Oct 2020
Young adult novels are a ripe source for Hollywood adaptations, but perhaps even those which sell over a million copies function more effectively in the mind’s imagination on a page and not on film. Grandpa is getting old. He fights with the self-checkout. His driving skills have atrophied. To brew the inter-generational conflict for a film titled The War with Grandpa, the family opts to move Grandpa in with them, injecting him into their busy lives, instead of moving him into an assisted living facility. To make space for Grandpa, 11 year-old Peter is evicted from his fortress of solitude, a roomy space on the second floor, into the cobweb-ridden attic which nobody seems to care comes with bats and rodents. Peter believes the best way forward to reclaim his lost abode is to instigate a series of pranks and low-to-mid level shenanigans which would most likely shatter Grandpa’s hip in the real world.
The hook is set for the elementary school crowd. They may find it funny to watch one of their own battle a figure as respected and loved as a Grandpa. How to get anybody older than 10 to watch this? Cast Robert De Niro (Joker) as Grandpa and give him a bunch of well-known friends who all have their aches and pains, problems understanding contemporary society, and will hearten an aging audience – "see, Christopher Walken and Jane Seymour are getting old too! Told you celebrities are just like us." Grandpa Ed will not succumb to Peter’s attempts at juvenile skullduggery. They draft rules of engagement and declare game on. Yawn.
The hook is set for the elementary school crowd. They may find it funny to watch one of their own battle a figure as respected and loved as a Grandpa. How to get anybody older than 10 to watch this? Cast Robert De Niro (Joker) as Grandpa and give him a bunch of well-known friends who all have their aches and pains, problems understanding contemporary society, and will hearten an aging audience – "see, Christopher Walken and Jane Seymour are getting old too! Told you celebrities are just like us." Grandpa Ed will not succumb to Peter’s attempts at juvenile skullduggery. They draft rules of engagement and declare game on. Yawn.
Early on, someone asks, "So, how is the pointless war with your Grandpa going?" Exactly. Based on the 1984 book by Robert Kimmel Smith, The War with Grandpa presents Peter (Oakes Fegley, Pete's Dragon) as an identifiable every man. He’s learning to cope with being a nothing 6th-grader in Middle School after ruling the world as a 5th-grader. Random bullies come around throwing his belongings in trash cans, dumping his lunch into his backpack, and even socking him in the face. That is indication number one this book does not fully translate to 2020. That bully would be charged with assault and battery today. I wonder if Grandpa and his cohorts may be able to help out that situation.
Peter’s parents (Uma Thurman and Rob Riggle) have their own struggles. Dad is an architect working underappreciated at a firm which build big box stores and mom usually takes the brunt of schemes gone awry between Peter and Grandpa which gets her into trouble with the local motorcycle cop. As I am in neither the kid nor senior citizen demographic this film is supposed to draw in, I only truly laughed when De Niro accidentally exposes himself a couple times to Rob Riggle while enduring another one of Peter’s pranks. The film’s centerpiece is a trampoline dodgeball tournament between the kid and AARP gangs. The kids still have full use of their joints, but their elders know strategy. Watching De Niro, Walken, Seymour, and Cheech Marin bumble around on the trampolines is nowhere near as funny as must have been envisioned in production meetings.
Director Tim Hill, known for an Alvin and the Chipmunks film and a Garfield installment, seems stuck. Kids will always laugh at pranks, but fashioning an entire film around them is a tall order. There are some attempted lessons that war is bad, middle school is tough, and aging is hard, but none of it sticks. Those who remember may recognize sad nostalgia that De Niro and Walken, the tortured stars of The Deer Hunter, are now reduced to track suit trampoline tumbles. There is no harm in making the film, but it's going to be just as forgettable as Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, and whatever sequel of Diary of a Wimpy Kid they trot out next.
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