Movie Review: ‘Parental Guidance’

Some parents will be surreptitiously texting, some sleeping, and some guffawing.
Movie Review: ‘Parental Guidance’
Old school meets new school when Billy Crystal and Bette Midler as Artie and Diane Decker take care of grandkids played by (from left) Joshua Rush, Bailee Madison, and Kyle Harrison Breitkopf in the comedy “Parental Guidance.” Kerry Hayes/ Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Mark Jackson
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A more clichéd, cloying, and predictable treacle fest than Parental Guidance, you will not find. That is, if you’re an adult. That’s why it’s a pretty good film for small children!

Billy Crystal plays washed-up minor league baseball radio announcer Artie Decker. We meet him while he’s announcing a Grizzlies vs. Sacramento River Cats game.

He’s clearly very good at his job, but according to the front office—he’s ancient. He’s not hip, he doesn’t have a Facebook account, doesn’t know what an “app” is, or how to “tweet.” He gets fired.

He sadly goes home, where his wife (Bette Midler) is hosting a pole-dancing workout, which, in a child’s movie, feels like some kind of gratuitous naughtiness. They get a call from their daughter about watching the grandkids, whom they rarely get to see. They pack in a hurry.

Meanwhile, in the fully automated house of their daughter Alice (Marisa Tomei), where you talk to the house and it talks back (and secretly records everything you do), said daughter has been busy raising the kids in the currently popular manner.

Everything is highly “PC.” There are no boundaries, there’s no saying “no,” no competition, and no spanking. The kids have to “use their words.” Basically the parents spoil their kids rotten.

The grandparents and grandkids are reintroduced, whereupon the youngest grandchild, Barker, immediately adds an “f” to grandpa Artie’s name.

Artie shows the middle son how to stand up to bullies, and haggles with princeling Barker over the price of bribery to keep him from tattling on grandpa’s various mishaps.

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Mark Jackson
Mark Jackson
Film Critic
Mark Jackson is the chief film critic for The Epoch Times. In addition to the world’s number-one storytelling vehicle—film, he enjoys martial arts, weightlifting, motorcycles, vision questing, rock-climbing, qigong, oil painting, and human rights activism. Jackson earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Williams College, followed by a classical theater training, and has 20 years’ experience as a New York professional actor, working in theater, commercials, and television daytime dramas. He narrated The Epoch Times audiobook “How the Specter of Communism is Ruling Our World,” which is available on iTunes and Audible. Jackson is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic.
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