There's an audience out there somewhere for Parental Guidance, and that demographic is those who think a game of "Kick the Can" can save a family. Actually, it's anybody who remembers playing "Kick the Can" at all, or still thinks Billy Crystal has something funny to contribute. In truth, he hasn't been funny in a very long time. He deserves to be right next to Woody Allen in the pantheon of comic legends who have been passed by, and there's no greater example of how out-of-date Crystal is than in the bland and predictable Parental Guidance.
Crystal not only stars but serves as a producer, but clearly this pathetic script was either cooked up by him or written for him. He rattles off one terrible "joke" after another as Artie(even the name is meant to illicit laughter), a born-talker and a minor league baseball announcer with a dream of hitting it big announcing for the San Francisco Giants. When he's fired unceremoniously, basically for being too old and not knowing what Facebook is, he comes crawling back home where we are burdened with the terrible sight of Bette Midler working a stripper pole. If you manage to survive such a thing, you'll learn she plays his wife, Diane, an equally outsized personality.
In a fairly lazy set up, we quickly learn that Artie and Diane hardly ever see their three grandkids. Their daughter, Alice(Marisa Tomei) lives in some weird space-age home with her boring stiff husband(Tom Everett Scott), where they've sheltered their kids away from anything fun. Wanting to get away for a vacation alone, but unable to find the more responsible pair of grandparents, they're forced to call in Diane and Artie for babysitting duty. Diane wants desperately to be a part of their lives, while Artie could seem to care less.
Shocking as it may sound, the grandkids don't understand Artie's ancient sense of humor. Even when he's self-deprecating it comes off as obnoxious. Alice looks for every excuse to hang around and not leave her kids alone, clashing with the grandparents over just about everything, from child-rearing to food(the kids have been told yogurt is just like ice cream, in the film's one brief funny moment), to the way oldest daughter Harper(the excellent but wasted Bailee Madison) is forced to practice the violin incessantly. One child is a wimp harassed by the school bully. You can probably figure out where Artie's bad advice leads. The film lurches to find humor wherever it can, and as one might expect it settles on groin and toilet jokes to get by. Artie gets clubbed in the jewels by a kid with a baseball bat, then projectile vomits all over his face in the moment that best signifies the desperate lengths this film goes to for laughs. By the time skateboarding legend Tony Hawk has slipped on a pool of urine Parental Guidance has long since worn out its welcome.
There's little in the way of insight on parenting, and a total misunderstanding of...well, pretty much everything involving familial relationships. Crystal is in his comfort zone here, and it's not like he's terrible so much as he's just well past his prime. Midler seems to have just crash landed from the planet "Ham". I'm not sure what the heck she was doing here, but I can only assume the producers told her she'd get a couple of chances to bust out some showtunes and that was enough to convince her. Tomei is too good for movies like this, and you can see on her face that she knows it. The direction by Andy Fickman, selected no doubt because of his Jewtopia stage production, is uninspiring. His mandate seems to have been to just stick the camera right up Crystal and Midler's noses and just leave it there.
We can expect one or two movies like this every single holiday season, all with aims of being the next Meet the Parents, as if that's something to aspire to. Parental Guidance makes those movies look like gems, which should be all you need to know about it.
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