Grandma's Boy Reviews

Lacking so much as a shred of wit and crammed with more product placements than jokes, this unendurable stoner comedy clearly disproves the movie-formula wisdom that two guys, one Xbox and a 2-foot-long bong add up to something funny. Thirty-five-year-old developmentally arrested video-game tester Alex (the unappealing Allen Covert, who cowrote the script) is desperate for a place to crash, having been evicted after his roommate (Jonathan Loughran) spends their rent money on Filipino massage therapists. Alex's pot dealer (Peter Dante) won't have any room once his new guard lion arrives, and Alex is forced to leave the home of his equally immature friend and coworker, Jeff (Nick Swardson), after Alex accidentally ejaculates on Jeff's mother (it's that kind of movie). Hearing that her darling grandson is about to become homeless, Jeff's grandmother, Lilly (Doris Roberts), practically begs him to move in with her and her two elderly roommates, dazed and confused Bea (Shirley Knight), who carries a cosmetic case filled with meds wherever she goes, and Grace (Shirley Jones), a sultry, four-time widow who swigs her wine right out of the bottle, straight from the fridge. Living with Grandma has its perks — the leftover-filled refrigerator is a pothead's dream smorgasbord — but Alex is way too embarrassed to tell his much younger coworkers at Brainasium that his "three hot new roommates" are all over 65, and he's particularly afraid that the cute new project manager, Samantha (Linda Cardellini, in a huge comedown from BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN), will find out just how big a loser he really is. Padding out this thin premise are a number of even thinner complications: Jeff can't get any work done at home when the gals commandeer the living-room TV for an Antiques Roadshow marathon (even though there's clearly another set in his bedroom), and a creepy video-game designer (Joel David Moore), who dresses like he swallowed the red pill, tries to pass off the game Jeff has been working on for the past three years as his own. There's also an intergenerational romance between Jeff and Grace and a monkey driving a jeep, but none of it — not even a single fart joke — is remotely funny and it's a miracle that Jones, Knight and Roberts emerge with most of their dignity intact. Too bad the same can't be said for everyone else involved in this total waste of time.