My surprising quantity of thoughts on The War With Grandpa

In a holiday season that has suddenly become pretty crowded with movies I want or need to see, The War With Grandpa would not ordinarily have been one of them.

But that's where having kids comes in.

They weren't actually both my kids. A movie was just one part of the busy schedule of ways we were trying to wow a friend of my ten-year-old son on his first sleepover with us. Because it was also my younger son's birthday party, that's where we started before doing some skateboarding/scootering, and then the movie. My other son would have accompanied us but he actually transitioned from his party to a sleepover at his aunt's -- a response to his stated concern that he would be bullied by his brother and his brother's friend. A risk not worth taking on the day of his birthday party (his actual birthday isn't until January 1st).

The movie actually had a lot of bullying in it, both the ordinary kind, where an older kid at your school dumps your bowl of chili into your backpack, and the kind that's particular to this movie, with a kid to his own grandfather, and vice versa.

That's not one of the things I want to talk about with regard to The War With Grandpa, which seems to be going over like a lead balloon with most critics, but which I really enjoyed. I'll just keep this one to myself, though, as the movie has already been out for a couple weeks here, and I usually try to write reviews of thing for ReelGood sooner after they hit the cinemas than that. Keep it to myself, and to all of you.

There were, however, no fewer than three things it occurred to me to write about as I was watching the movie. Hence the title of this post. And here you go.

The cartoon character face of Rob Riggle

I have appreciated Rob Riggle as a comic presence for some time now. He has a small but comedically essential role in one of my favorite comedies of this century, Step Brothers. ("Pow!") 

It wasn't until this movie that I really realized why I appreciate him so much. Which is: He has a cartoon character face. 

I mean, just look at this guy:

What a happy guy.

But more than that, what a cartoon character! He looks like William Hanna and Joseph Barbera imagined him one day and then brought him to life. 

Or more than maybe a cartoon character, maybe it's that he looks like a caricature. You remember when you used to not be able to walk through any tourist area in the world without there being some guy sitting in a chair, ready and able to pick up a Sharpie and draw a seven-minute portrait of your giant head on a teeny tiny body that was skiing or playing tennis?

Yes, that's what Rob Riggle looks like.

God bless him, he's a joy to watch.

Interestingly, one of the teenage characters in the cast also has a "Riggle face" -- so much so that I actually thought he might be Riggle's son, benefitting from a little bit of nepotism. Turns out, no -- his name is Isaac Kragten and here's what the looks like:

You can't really see it here but trust me, he has a very Riggle quality to him.

And speaking of faces ...

I missed Uma Thurman's Picasso face

It hasn't been that long since I've seen Uma Thurman in a movie -- she made a brief appearance in Lars von Trier's 2018 film The House That Jack Built -- but it felt like ages since I'd seen her in anything properly, where she had a significant role. That's because before that it was the 2015 film Burnt, and before that it was Lars von Trier again with the two Nymphomaniac films, which I didn't even remember her being in. (Not that I remembered her being in Burnt.)

She's only 50. We should not have had that long of an Uma Thurman drought. Oh the lives Harvey Weinstein has ruined.

Anyway, watching this, I realized how much I missed her and her Picasso face.

Now, before anyone starts accusing me of some kind of Weinstein-style body or appearance shaming -- even though I don't know if that's one of the things he did -- I absolutely mean it as a compliment when I say she has a Picasso face. It's not even really that anything is disproportionate, as she could pass for either a conventional beauty or an unconventional one.

But you will agree, there is something eccentric about her face, something that absolutely caused her to become an A-lister where people whose beauty is more uncomplicated did not reach similar levels of success.

Here, this is her nowadays:

She hasn't suddenly turned into an old woman and she's clearly still "got it." 

And by "it" I don't only mean a distinctive appearance. I mean a presence, a charisma, and in the case of The War With Grandpa, a great sense of comic timing.

Early on in the film, the kid and his grandpa agree on the rules of engagement for their turf war over the kid's bedroom, and one of those is that there should be no collateral damage -- no negative consequences to anyone else in the family but them. So much for that. The movie quickly establishes a running bit where their pranks backfire on her character, who is the grandfather's daughter and the boy's mother. Twice these pranks encroach on her drive time, and lead her first to throw the contents of a coffee cop spiked with hot sauce onto a motorcycle cop next to her -- and later, to do the same with a python.

Thurman kills it in these scenes. Sometimes you worry that when someone hasn't been working for a while -- she's appeared some on TV, but that doesn't count ha ha -- then they may lose some of their sharpness. Not so here. And whatever it was about this particular script that prompted her to get back into the game, I'm very glad she did.

The redemption of Grandpa De Niro

Robert De Niro has been in the grandpa phases of his career for long enough that it no longer feels like a recent development. It's been at least ten years, anyway, as 2010's Little Fockers was, technically speaking, my ten-year-old son's first movie in the theater, given that he was a baby sleeping at my feet for one of those "get mom out to the movies" sessions.

But he's only been in two movies where the word "Grandpa" was in the title, and the first one was godawful.

That first was 2016's Dirty Grandpa, a film I hated so much, not only was it my lowest ranked out of the 151 movies I saw that year, but there are currently only 18 movies lower than it on my entire Flickchart. That may be too harsh of a judgment, but it gives you some idea just how much I hate that movie.

That movie's total absence of heart was why it repulsed me so much. Turns out, maybe De Niro just needed to pick a grandpa script that did not make him an asshole.

The War With Grandpa is that script. Every time you think this movie is going to veer off into exaggerated Dennis the Menace meets Home Alone territory, it anchors itself with a really sweet scene -- a really conspicuous demonstration of its heart. And that means, if only by the transitive property, that De Niro himself also has a ton of heart in this film.

As it turns out, it's much more fun to enjoy De Niro in a film than to roll your eyes at what seems like another terrible choice just to earn a few extra bucks.

With the right script, De Niro still has a lot to offer us, and I still want to see him offer it. I've avoided enough of his recent other movies to know how he comes across in those, when he's bringing more adult material to the table, but it's really nice to know that he's capable of doing work that isn't just for the lowest common denominator, be that kids or teenagers looking for some cheap dick jokes (as in Dirty Grandpa).

And The War With Grandpa -- which he likely filmed at age 75 or 76 -- gives good evidence that we could have him around a while longer. He still seems pretty spry. It's nice to know that we might not have to choke down however many more movies he still wants to make, but that there could be some War With Grandpas thrown in there.