Dirty Grandpa

I remember seeing the poster for Dirty Grandpa and thinking it was an elaborate piece of performance art—a meta-commentary on the state of the Hollywood comedy. There stood Robert De Niro, the man who gave us Travis Bickle and Jake LaMotta, wearing a neon visor and a grin that suggested he’d just been handed a very large check he intended to cash immediately. I watched this on a laptop with a cracked screen while eating a bag of pretzel sticks that had definitely passed their "best by" date, and honestly, the stale crunch of the pretzels matched the film’s vibe perfectly.

Released in 2016, a year that felt like a fever dream in more ways than one, Dirty Grandpa arrived at the tail end of the "raunchy R-rated comedy" boom. We were moving away from the Hangover era and into a more fragmented streaming landscape, yet here was a theatrical release that felt like it was trying to break every social contract ever written. It is a film that essentially asks: "How much dignity is Robert De Niro willing to set on fire for our amusement?" The answer, it turns out, is all of it.

The Legend vs. The Abs

The setup is a classic road-trip trope that we’ve seen since the days of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but with significantly more bodily fluid jokes. Zac Efron plays Jason Kelly, a high-strung corporate lawyer who looks like he was sculpted out of Greek marble and anxiety. He’s days away from marrying Meredith (Julianne Hough), a woman so controlling she’s practically a human Excel spreadsheet. Enter Dick Kelly (Robert De Niro), a recently widowed grandfather who tricks Jason into driving him to Florida.

Dick isn't there for the scenery; he's there because he hasn't been "unshackled" in forty years and wants to spend Spring Break in a blur of hedonism. Watching De Niro play a man who describes himself as a "horny hawk" is a genuinely disorienting experience. It’s a performance that feels like it was fueled by a bet between him and Dermot Mulroney (who plays the father/son middleman) to see who could stay in character the longest without looking at their Oscar. Efron handles the straight-man role with a surprising amount of grace, largely by leaning into his own "pretty boy" persona and letting himself be the literal and metaphorical butt of the joke.

Aubrey Plaza: Agent of Chaos

If there is a reason to watch this movie—and I use the word "reason" loosely—it is Aubrey Plaza. Playing Lenore, a college student with a very specific, aggressive attraction to De Niro’s character, she operates on a completely different comedic frequency than everyone else. While the rest of the film often feels like it’s trying too hard to be "edgy," Plaza (who blew us away in Parks and Recreation and later Ingrid Goes West) just exists in a state of pure, unadulterated weirdness.

She is the secret weapon that prevents the movie from being a total slog. Every time the plot threatens to get bogged down in Jason’s boring romance with a former classmate (Zoey Deutch, who is far better than this material), Plaza arrives to drop a line of dialogue so unhinged it reminded me that comedy is best when it’s slightly dangerous. The chemistry between her and De Niro is deeply uncomfortable, which is exactly why it works. It’s a testament to her talent that she can go toe-to-toe with a legend and make him look like the one who’s outclassed.

A Relic of the Pre-Streaming Era

Director Dan Mazer, who spent years as a key collaborator for Sacha Baron Cohen on projects like Borat, brings a bit of that "guerrilla" energy to the proceedings, but it’s filtered through a traditional studio lens. Interestingly, the screenplay by John Phillips actually landed on the "Black List"—the industry's annual tally of the most liked unproduced scripts—years before it was made. At some point, the industry decided that the world needed to see Robert De Niro in a shirtless flex-off with Zac Efron.

The film was a massive financial success, raking in nearly $100 million against a modest budget, proving that there was still a huge appetite for "low-brow" theatrical comedy before these types of movies migrated almost exclusively to Netflix and Hulu. The critics absolutely loathed it, with some calling it the worst film of the decade. But looking at it now, in an era of highly sanitized, franchise-driven blockbusters, there’s something almost rebellious about how committed Dirty Grandpa is to being the cinematic equivalent of a gas station burrito. It’s not "good" in any traditional sense, but it is unapologetically exactly what it wants to be.

Apparently, the production actually filmed during a real Spring Break in Tybee Island, Georgia. The "extras" you see in the background aren't all paid actors; many were just actual college students who were confused as to why a two-time Academy Award winner was screaming at them through a megaphone. That raw, chaotic energy bleeds through the screen.

Dirty Grandpa is a fascinoma. It’s a movie that shouldn't exist, starring a man who shouldn't be there, doing things that defy logic. I can't in good conscience tell you it’s a masterpiece, but if you’re in the mood for something that is aggressively, hilariously committed to its own bad taste, you could do worse. It’s the kind of film you watch with friends just so you can all agree that you can't believe what you just saw. Just make sure your pretzel sticks are fresh.