This grating family comedy resembles a sitcom in its flat lighting, patronizing music cues, and frames supplying little visual information apart from the actors’ mugging faces. Billy Crystal and Bette Midler play recent retirees trying to bond with their wacky grandkids, and by the time this is over we’ve learned a good deal about all the characters’ bathroom habits. Reactionary in its attitude toward parenting, the movie presents the kids’ parents (Tom Everett Scott and Marisa Tomei) as caricatured overprotective liberals and the culturally insensitive grandparents as paragons of common sense. Andy Fickman (The Game Plan, You Again) directed.
Parental Guidance
PG • 1 hour 44 min • 2012