At least once a week, after my kids have gone to sleep, I like to take an hour or so to indulge in my personal relaxation program. I lie down, take a few deep breaths, and once I’m feeling centred, sift through negative online reviews for products, services and people I have no emotional investment in.
To be clear, this isn’t because I am a psychopath. Or because I otherwise take any particular pleasure in cruelty. Rather, I love reading these reviews because it is so reassuring to know there are people out there who are more deranged than myself. Which is so much healthier than being a psychopath.
Robert De Niro (with Sebastian Maniscalco) in new film About My Father: 80 years old and still making terrible comedies.Credit: Marija Ercegovac
Take, for example, a one-star review I stumbled across for a fancy chocolate shop. The shop’s crime, according to the indignant review writer, was a sales assistant’s refusal to GIFT A FREE SAMPLE CHOCOLATE TO A DOG. There is nothing better than reading something like that and thinking, “Well, I might be mad but I’d never complain about that on the internet.”
Anyway, a few weeks ago I found myself watching some fairly unkind reviews of Zac Efron’s allegedly new face. To my mind, the guy looks totally fine. Sure, he isn’t as pretty as he was in 2007, but he also isn’t 18 anymore. It was Efron reviews and the dark power of internet algorithms that led me on a slow and meandering path to something called Dirty Grandpa.
Dirty Grandpa is a 2016 movie starring Efron’s (allegedly) old face and Robert De Niro. I had not heard of it until this fateful night. The comments online were unkind but also … intriguing. I was particularly captivated by a review by one Stephen Elias who wrote that the film is: “Very political. Capitalism is bad, anti-2nd amendment, anti-Fox News… so many more leftist views. If you like an 85-year-old guy chasing a 17-year-old girl to screw, then this is the movie for you.”
Although his description wasn’t super appealing, it sounded kinda similar to the plot of Primary Colors, so I decided to watch anyway. Plus it had De Niro, noted serious actor in it. How bad could it be?
The premise of Dirty Grandpa is pretty simple. De Niro plays a recently widowed grandfather who tricks his grandson, Efron, into driving him across the US while screaming about vaginas and tampons. They stop along the way so that Efron can smoke crack and De Niro can be racist and homophobic.
Still intrigued? When Efron talks passionately about his job in commercial law and suggests his grandfather would like it, De Niro says he’d rather “let Queen Latifah shit in my mouth from a f—ing hot air balloon.” When Efron dresses for a round of golf, De Niro tells him he looks like he’s attending a “buttf—er convention”.
