The War with Grandpa
Simply taking one small glance in the direction of director Tim Hill’s filmography will tell one all they need to know about his latest project, The War with Grandpa. The acclaimed filmmaker behind such hits as Alvin and the Chipmunks and Hop has another winner on his hands. The War with Grandpa assembles an unreasonably talented cast and strands them all in a shitty, uncreative, unfunny family film that feels about 15 years out of date.
The film revolves around Peter (Oakes Fegley), a sixth grader who is horrified to find out that his recently-widowed grandfather (Robert De Niro) is moving in with his family, thereby kicking him out of his room and up to the attic. Unwilling to let such an injustice stand, Peter devises a series of increasingly elaborate pranks to drive him out, but grandpa won’t go without a fight.
It’s anyone’s guess how Hill was able to wrangle so many big-name actors for this and, for the most part, they appear to be phoning it in for a paycheck. De Niro is obviously an incredibly talented actor, and his natural charisma is able to carry him pretty damn far, but he is given almost nothing good to work with. There’s a point in the first act where it looks like they might take his character and his grief in a potentially interesting direction, but of course they don’t because why would they? Oakes Fegley is a very likable child actor, but here, he is saddled with an incredibly unlikable character that any actor would have trouble making work. The supporting cast fails to leave an impression either. Uma Thurman lazily chews the scenery, Rob Riggle plays Rob Riggle, Christopher Walken plays Christopher Walken.
The script, courtesy of Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, is trite nonsense. There are some solid morals at the center of this story, but they are buried beneath inane jokes and the most formulaic plot and character arcs imaginable.
As stated quite plainly earlier, Tim Hill isn’t a good director. He has no visual style, he doesn’t wring good performances out of his actors and he has absolutely no comedic timing. The cinematography by Greg Gardiner does nothing to differentiate itself from any made-for-TV film. One of the more obnoxious parts of the film is Aaron Zigman’s terribly intrusive score that tells the audience how to feel constantly. The movie as a whole thinks the audience is a bunch of morons, it doesn’t respect them.
There is no reason to watch The War with Grandpa. None. Everything it attempts has been done better by a thousand other family comedies before it. It’s not the worst film that has been released in 2020, but it just might be the laziest. Avoid.