Fellman's Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers 

Grandma’s Boy is a stoner movie about a video game tester who gets kicked out of his house and has to move in with his grandma while working on a new video game that is behind schedule at his job, Brainaseum. It’s the best movie that Adam Sandler has been involved with in a long time and he’s not even in it. He had nothing to do with it except for putting up the money for it. That’s all he’s good for. Funding talented people.  

What’s it about? Alex, a 35-year-old video game tester, lives with his friend Josh. They get evicted from their house because Josh has been spending their rent money on Filipino hookers for the last 6 months and not telling Alex. Not knowing where to go, Alex goes to ask his weed dealer, Dante, who can’t let him stay with him. And then he asks his co-worker Jeff, and there’s an incident with Jeff’s mom. Because Jeff lives with his parents. Even though Jeff is also an adult. Alex’s grandma offers him the room of her roommate that just died, and Alex, having nowhere else to go, takes her up on her offer. Alex’s grandma spoils him like grandmas do, and in return, expects him to do all sorts of chores around the house, keeping Alex working day and night. He’s exhausted all the time. He tells his friends at work that it’s because he’s sleeping with three hot babes all the time. One day, his grandma and her roommates come in to drop off his lunch and Samantha, the new manager, brings them up to Alex’s desk and ruins the charade with all his coworkers. Later, in a meeting, their boss, Mr. Cheezle, congratulates everybody with a dinner on the company and wants to send them to a vegan restaurant. They have an altercation with the waiter there and go to a Tommy Burger down the street instead. They go back to Alex’s house so that Jeff can use the bathroom and find out that the three ladies have drank a pot of tea made out of the weed Alex had stashed in a tin on top of the dresser in his room and all three of them are extremely high. A huge party ensues, with Alex calling Dante and Dante calling everybody he knows and the party becoming legendary. The next day, they find out that they made drunken phone calls to J.P., the programming “genius” at their job, and it could cause problems for them. J.P. comes to Alex’s house crying about his social anxiety and sees the game that Alex is working on, Demonik. J.P. offers to take it home and give Alex some notes on it and Alex agrees. The next day at Brainaseum, Alex goes to work to find out that J.P. has given Demonik to Mr. Cheezle and claimed it as his own because there’s no proof that Alex was working on it. Samantha goes back to Alex’s house to find him and runs into his grandma and finds out that she’s been playing the game for some time. So, she asks her to come in and challenge J.P. to play it and prove that Alex created Demonik.  

What’s good? Grandma’s Boy is a stoner comedy if there ever was one. If that’s what you’re looking for, that’s what you’ll find. It’s one of the funniest stoner comedies I’ve ever seen. If that’s not what you’re looking for, it might not be so good… 

What’s bad? It’s not a high-brow movie. It’s vulgar, offensive, explicit, and unapologetic. I don’t think any of those things are bad. I’m actually a big fan of all of those things. But from what I understand, the vast majority of people think those things are bad.  

The actors? The acting is good, coming from pretty much everybody. They’re all A list actors. If you don’t know who Doris Roberts is, you’ve been living under a rock for 50 years. The other two ladies, Shirley Jones and Shirley Knight were both very famous actresses. The rest of the cast were all people you know from something or other. Nick Swardson, Kevin Nealon, Peter Dante, Jonah Hill, and Joel Moore. Rob Schneider and David Spade make brief appearances because it’s an Adam Sandler movie. Kevin Nash is in the beginning if you’re a fan of professional wrestling…  

The effects? There’s not a whole lot of effects to speak of. Maybe some green screen effects with the monkey and the car. Any special effects you can think of are practical. And they would be simple enough to pull off. 

The first line. The first line of the movie is hilarious. It’s dead silent and they’re playing a boxing video game when Josh just yells “FUCK! STOP HITTING ME!” I don’t know why I find that so funny.  

Adam Sandler hasn’t made a good movie since Happy Gilmore. Adam Sandler doesn’t make good movies. Adam Sandler made two good movies. Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison. The rest of his movies were cash grabs pointed at the lowest common denominator. The best thing he’s done was get out of the way and put his money up for other people to use. At least that way something worthwhile can get made.  

It won awards. Despite getting bad ratings on websites like Rotten Tomatoes, Grandma’s Boy won awards like “best stoner movie” in High Times Magazine and other inconsequential things. The CEO of Blockbuster Video said it was their most stolen video because “nobody ever returned it”.  

Dante. Dante is one of the most creative characters I’ve ever seen in a movie. I don’t know where the inspiration came from for the character of Dante, but if there is a real person like him in real life, I’d like to meet him, because he’d probably be a real fun person to hang out with. 

Jeff’s jammies. The scene with Jeff and his jammies is one of my favorites. He’s got a racecar bed, and he sleeps with stuffed animals. He lives with his parents and he’s 30-something years old. That too is a hilarious character. It’s just an all-around great script.  

Video game tester. Being a video game tester would be an awesome job. I would love to play video games all day. That sounds like a really fulfilling thing to do.  

Game competition. I like how they have competitions every day with a new game that somebody brings in. Just some random game that somebody finds. Like “Frog Bog”. Where did they find “Frog Bog”? It was like a 16-bit game. 

Mr. Cheezle. A video game office is kind of the perfect place for somebody like Mr. Cheezle to run. Eccentric, free spirited, open minded. The kind of person that won’t be held down by corporate ideals. That’s who you want running video games.  

Stupid idiot room full of jerks. J.P. is the nerdy kid that nobody wants to hang around with at recess. And working at a video game company with a bunch of immature people who are likely to make fun of you isn’t the best of ideas. 

Grandma doing that stuff would be great. Having a grandma to do all that kind of stuff would be awesome. She’s doing his laundry and cooking him dinner and she cleans up the whole house after the party is over. It’s like the party never even happened. 

Grandma’s prank. She pretended to be Sophie in the middle of the night while Alex was sleeping to try and scare him. I don’t know if I’d be scared or not, but you gotta admit, if you thought there was a ghost in there and you could hear it, you’d wonder too… 

Old people. They’re so oblivious. They don’t know what weed is. They don’t know what The Food Network is. They don’t own a microwave. I mean, you hear it’s mean to make fun of old people, and it is, but come on… 

He turns the oven up to 450. He turns the oven up to 450 degrees and puts everything on one sheet pan and puts it in the oven. There was spaghetti on that sheet pan. I don’t think you can reheat spaghetti that way… 

Jeff and Dance Dance Revolution. How did Jeff learn Dance Dance Revolution? Was that his first time? Is he just a naturally good dancer? Does being good at video games make you have good rhythm? How’d he learn to do that cowboy, double step move? That was pretty impressive. 

Grandma pounds a beer. Grandma pounds a whole beer when she goes in the kitchen to talk to Alex. Like, go Grandma… 

Greatest party ever. That is the greatest party that ever happened, ever. I would love to have a party like that happen around me, all of the sudden. And it just happened. It just happened around them, all of the sudden. They fell into it. They came back from the Tommy Burger and fell into the greatest party of all time. Talk about luck. 

The house is completely clean. Grandma cleans the entire house by the time Alex wakes up. How does she do it? What time did she get up to go around and clean the entire house? 

J.P. is surprised to get a message. Why is J.P. so surprised to have a message? Like nobody has ever called him before. He can’t even believe it happened. “Who would call me?” 

They have to control the monkey. When they were making the movie, in the scene in the car, the animal controller had to yell at the monkey because it got scared and it was about to leap at Alan Covert. But the controller yelled at it, and it calmed down and went back to pretending to drive the car. Jack Hannah always said “Working with animals is tricky, because no matter how much you train them, a wild animal is always going to be a wild animal…” 

So, yeah. Go and see Grandma’s Boy. It’s one of my favorite movies and once you see it, it’ll be one of your favorite movies too. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…