Grandma's Boy (2006)

Directed by Nicholaus Goossen
Written by Barry Wernwick, Allen Covert and Nick Swardson

Rated R for drug use and language throughout, strong crude and sexual humor, and nudity

"Grandma's Boy" was made by Happy Madison Productions, a company formed by people associated with "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore". While it doesn't quite live up to the high standards of these two 90's comic gems, "Grandma's Boy" is a solid entry in the "gross-out" and "stoner" comedy genre. The acting is so-so, but this film does feature several decent comedians, including Jonah Hill (Seth from "Superbad"), Allen Covert (who is also one of the writers), Doris Roberts (best known as "Everybody Loves Raymond"'s mother) as well as comedy grey-boy allstars David Spade, Rob Schneider and Kevin Nealon.

The film's plot revolves around Alex (Allen Covert), a 35-year old video game tester. He is living his dream. He sits around smoking weed and playing video games and gets paid for it. This stoner fantasy comes screeching to a hault when Alex is suddenly evicted by his irate landlord (played by Rob Schneider). Apparently Alex's roommate has developed a sex addiction and all of the rent money Alex gave him for the last six months was spent on Thai hookers.

With no place to stay, Alex winds up crashing with his adorable grandma (played by "...Raymond"'s Doris Roberts) and her two elderly roommates. But Alex has trouble keeping his world of drugs and video games out of grandma's house. Grandma finds "tea" (read: marijuana) in a tin in the room Alex is staying in, and drinks it with her two roommates, causing them to laugh hysterically at Spanish soap operas for hours.

So now that Alex has a place to stay, he can focus more on his work: debugging the final levels of a maladapted prodigy's newest video game masterpiece. Alex's video game testing co-workers have endless antics at "Brainasium", the company where they work. Whether grossing each other out with fabricated sex stories or challenging each other to any number of video games available, these guys know how to have fun at work. Enter Samantha (Linda Carellini), a sexy new Brainasium employee who's been charged by the big boss (Kevin Nealon) to oversee the completion of the game. Samantha and Alex hit it off well enough and proceed into a sweet if shallow romance.

The only fly in the ointment is J.P., the video-game prodigy who made Brainasium's flagship game by himself at age 13. Tragically geeky with a tendency to lapse into pseudo robotic speech, J.P. is the penultimate nerd. Alex and the others try to get along with him, but J.P. is immune to cool. He hates and envies the video game testers.

But J.P. isn't the only one at Brainasium with talent. Alex has been secretly coding a game called "Demonik" for years. When J.P. sees "Demonik", he offers to test it for Alex and give him some notes. Instead, J.P. steals Alex's only copy of "Demonik" and presents it to Brainasium's CEO as his own project. Unable to prove that "Demonik" is his project, Alex quits his job and gives up. He seeks refuge in the basement lair of his drug dealer Dante and they proceed to combine many different kinds of marijuana into a mighty joint that intoxicates them verrily. But Samantha refuses to give up on Alex's cause. She enlists the help of Alex's grandma (the only person to play the game before J.P. stole it) and the two rush to Brainasium to clear Alex's name. Grandma challenges J.P. to a game of "Demonik" in front of the boss, and ultimately kicks his ass, "proving" Alex to be the true creator of the game. 

The gross-out jokes are this film's real strength. My favorite line: "I'm sorry I came all over your mom." This film is guaranteed to make you laugh hysterically but uncomfortably at least a few times. The biggest overall weakness is the plot, which really only serves as a flimsy wire frame on which to hang the jokes and comic antics that are the "meat" of this film. For instance, it's hard to believe that a video game programmer would have only one copy and no proof of ownership of a video game he'd invested 3 years in developing. But watching a 70-year old woman beat the pants off an uber-geek in an ultra-violent video game death match is entertaining enough to quell my disbelief. The love story is cute but unrealistic (how many super-hot women are attracted to middle-aged video game testers?) and doesn't really add to or detract from the main plot.

I gave "Grandma's Boy" an 8/10. It has some unfunny moments, but these are balanced by moments of extreme comedy that make it all worth it in the long run. Good performances all around, especially by Doris Roberts as grandma. A good movie to watch with your buds. If you don't tend to enjoy college humor and stoner comedies, this film may not be for you.













I also recommend: