We have seen this all before. A film playing at every theater that is full of stars wasting their talent and also our money. A film that does not know what it is. We saw it with the Cheaper by the Dozen films, and the Yours, Mines and Our remake. Parental Guidance is a film that closes out 2012 with the worst of the worst of everything.
Parental Guidance has an unoriginal story of grandparents staying temporarily with their grandkids while the parents are out of town and the outcome is not good.
The film has a great cast with Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, Marisa Tomei, Gedde Watanabe and Bailey Madison but really there isn't much to like about them here. Mostly, we get dry acting with some very plain writing. There are only about a dozen jokes that are laughable and that is it. After an hour and half with these dry and undeveloped characters, it hard to sit through much more.
There are a few original ideas including a recently fired baseball announcer who doesn't know what to do with himself and speech involving the famed Bobby Thompson home run call but really there is nothing special about this plot. It has the characters running around doing nothing and it is just not interesting. It does build up the idea of the Bailee Madison character going to a party but then the party is never shown.
Parental Guidance is also a film that really does not seem to know much about how the world really is. The film is set in a futuristic house that feels like it was made in Epcot which doesn't seen very real. They also have an X-Games scene which looks like it was shot in a small city park though the X-Games are really of course a very large spectacle. There is also a rain scene that couldn't look more phony.
A bright family but all lacking genetics
There really is no point to all of this. You could say that the movie is saying something about parenting but actually it is more about bad parenting.
Actually, I did not hate this movie as you might think and could sit through it again if I had to. That said I found it to be pretty useless and not a very smart movie, like a movie without a brain.
1.5/5
0 comments:
Post a Comment