Parental Guidance

Parental Guidance is an engaging comedy that bridges multiple generation gaps, making it that rare movie that grandparents, their kids, and their kids can enjoy.

Parental Guidance is one of those intergenerational embarrassment comedies in the "Meet the Fockers" line, where children can enjoy seeing grown-ups looking ridiculous.

It could be worse, and would be without Bette Midler or Marisa Tomei.

I can't deny I did feel fonder of my own family afterward, mostly because I know none of them would ever make me sit through Parental Guidance.

The execution, alas, prevents this from being a genuine crowdpleaser, with the better moments (mostly of the schmaltzy variety) more than offset by the irritating and tedious ones.

The kids are charmless, the writing is bland, and the embarrassing jokes sound like nails down a blackboard.

Andy Fickman's comedy offers a confused and flat portrayal of generational differences.

This is a must for all kids that are over the age of 7. A really funny movie with Billy Crystal (voice of Mike on monsters inc.). It's really funny, and is mostly on FX or FXM.

Admittingly this movie doesn't offer a whole lot. It's not much more than a somewhat 'cute' comedy about a set of quirky grandparents that has a theme based of the diverse age gaps of the characters. With that being said, the movie is solid in a lot of the things it tries to do. Billy and Bette work quite nicely as grandparents and there are some laughs thrown in as well. Definetly not the highest quality viewing, but a decent pick if your just in the mood for a light hearted comedy.

This wasn't as funny as I was hoping for but it was a pretty good film to watch with the family. Billy Crystal is great, as usual, and Bette Midler does a good job in more of a supporting role. Surprisingly, especially after my last movie-watching experience, the child actors in this movie were competent bordering on pretty good. The only character who really annoyed you was Marisa Tomei's. Speaking of annoying, that was really the drawback here. Like most modern day family comedies, this movie gets a decent amount of its laughs through pure annoyance. Not as bad as say, Meet the Parents, but it still have too many annoying parts. Overall, Parental Guidance is a decent family film but I wouldn't suggest it for most people.

Crystal and Midler have both done great films in the past so what happened? Not much in this movie. Your typical crude in poor taste comedy, except this one is not funny either. Crystal's classic one liners over the situation around him are kept to a minimum and the life the kids have is less realistic than a cartoon. This movie plays out like a poor Adams Family sequel where the good actors were replaced by poor low paid imitators. The poopie song was kinda funny though so I bumped it up to a 3.

I had to come to this movie mainly because my friend was going and I thought it would be a nice funny movie. It turned out to be a very predictable cheesy movie. Not good!