Netflix pick for 12/14/15 – ‘Grandma’s Boy’

As heard in episode 153 of Cinema Crespodiso.

Every now and then you just need to sit back and chill out with a ridiculous comedy, and it doesn’t get much more ridiculous than “Grandma’s Boy.” The story of a 35-year old video game designer who finds himself forced to move in with his grandmother and her two roommates and who also meets a girl he likes and wants to impress but also he’s developing his own video game on the side that some video game prodigy genius with the video game designer version of writer’s block wants to steal and pass off as his own, this is a movie with a weird plot with strange little subplots thrown in and a meandering, we’ll-get-there-eventually kind of tone that feels very much in line with the best (and worst) movies of this kind.

If Cheech and Chong made a movie in 2006 that featured video games, a wild lion, a witch doctor, Kevin Nealon and Jonah Hill suckling at a breast for multiple scenes, “Grandma’s Boy” would be that movie.

This is also the kind of movie that demonstrates that it is not really what you know but WHO you know, as lead actor, co-producer and co-writer Allen Covert is buddies with some fella named Adam Sandler, and having worked together numerous times in Sandler movies, Mr. Sandler was able to produce Covert’s movie with his production company, and Covert got his personal assistant Nicholaus Goossen to help him make it, and BOOM a cult classic was born.

While not well reviewed upon release or financially successful at the box office, this movie HAS built that cult following, as plenty of folks discovered this movie on home video and now more people can see it for themselves via the good ole Netflix Instant service (as well as iTunes and Amazon and all that noise). So check it out for yourself and see if you are on the same ridiculous wavelength as this movie.

Drive, Monkey! Drive!