Dirty Grandpa, satire and humor

While Dirty Grandpa may have found commercial success with its risqué humor, as a connoisseur of quality cinema I found little to appreciate in its crass shock-value approach. Zac Efron's talent is wasted on such an embarrassingly one-dimensional farce.

We can chuckle a little at director Dan Mazer's incompetence, but any film that lives or dies on the curses of Disney stars loses the art of true comedy. The script felt like something out of a frat boy's diary, not insightful social commentary.

A disservice to Efron fans hoping to see their idol shine, Dirty Grandpa lacked nuance or lasting influence. Its lazy R-rating squandered comedic intuition.

While crude antics have their box-office appeal, discerning viewers recognize that Dirty Grandpa is culturally irrelevant, apart from a case study in lucrative but hollow comedies.

Critics derided its frat-boy humor as a crass gimmick beneath everyone's talent. Film awards rightly snubbed performances that have since been better showcased elsewhere.

Commercially it succeeded only because of the controversy, but it left no cultural footprint. Robert De Niro's legacy deserved better than a hollow cash grab at this point in his illustrious career.

At $114 million and a budget of $19 million, it was only a financial victory. But quality films have impact, generate debate.

Both Efron and Zellweger continued to show their considerable gifts in projects that push social discourse, such as Downhill. Their fans look to them for meaningful and insightful roles, not this.