Grandma's Boy

In Nicholaus Goossen's Grandma's Boy, a 35-year-old video game tester (Allen Covert) is forced to move into the house his grandmother shares with two older female friends, affecting his highly unlikely romance with a gorgeous new boss and his battle with a dorky villain who's stolen his newly-invented interactive product. The fact that the three grand dames are played by Doris Roberts, Shirley Jones, and Shirley Knight is especially depressing, as the film is nothing more than an avalanche of sniggering sexual gags, frat-boy hijinks, and drug and gross-out jokes. Even with all the onscreen business, however, the picture manages to be flat and dull, as well as thoroughly obnoxious, spotlighting a cast of mugging dunderheads who come across like a bunch of overage Saturday Night Live rejects (not so farfetched: Grandma's Boy has the dubious pedigree of being made by Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production company and features dismal cameos by Rob Schneider and David Spade). But this brain-dead piece of slacker swill is worse than the worst Sandler, Schneider, or Spade movie ever made. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include two audio commentaries (one by director Nicholaus Goossen; the other by costars Allen Covert, Nick Swardson, and Peter Dante), a 13-minute montage featurette (including “Scenes That Went Up in Smoke,” “Unsmoked Material,” and “Smoke This”), 10 deleted/extended scenes (9 min.), the Fox Movie Channel produced “Casting Sessions” (8 min.), a “Monkey” featurette on the animal in the film (6 min.), the four-minute featurette “Covert Whacks It,” the music video “Another Day” performed by The Twenty Twos (plus a “making of” the video), and trailers. Bottom line: lots of extras for a puerile timewaster.] (F. Swietek)