Review: Dirty Grandpa marks career low for Robert De Niro

REVIEW: Robert De Niro plunges new depths as a depraved widower in the sexist and rancid filth-fest that is Dirty Grandpa.

Dirty Grandpa (MA15+)

Director: Dan Mazer (I Give it a Year)

Starring: Robert De Niro, Zac Efron, Aubrey Plaza, Zoey Deutch, Jason Mantzoukas.

Rating: {no stars}

The case for sexual discrimination against greys

The one thing Dirty Grandpa gets 100 per cent right is how the title is such a bullseye description of its refined target audience.

This is indeed the movie skeezy grandfathers have been waiting since retirement for: a rancid filth-fest about a rotten old widower desperate to knock boots with willing women aged approximately five decades younger ASAP.

OUT THERE: Zac Efron does The Macarena naked

Wrongtown ... Robert De Niro plays Zac Efron’s pervy grandfather.

In a new career low, plunging depths measurable only by sonar, Robert De Niro stars as Dick, a pervy pensioner whose wife has just carked it.

As soon as the funeral is over, Dick can’t wait to get home so he can disrobe and view his favourite adult erotica from his favourite chair.

Remarkably, even after treating us to the can’t-ever-be-unseen sight of a naked Robert De Niro getting his rocks off on a recliner rocker, it will continue to be all downhill (and downed trousers) for Dirty Grandpa.

Dick is desperate to get to Florida for a hot spring-break hook-up with anything with a pulse and without a clue.

Make it stop ... Robert De Niro plunges new depths in the cringeworthy Dirty Grandpa.

Having tricked his goody-two-shoes grandson Jason (Zac Efron) into driving him all the way there, Dick then locks his lewd libido in synch with that of an equally potty-minded young woman named Lenore (Aubrey Plaza).

Yep, this is indeed the cliffhanger sure to have the raincoat brigade breathing even heavier than usual: will the gropey grandpa get his wrinkled paws on those dirty goods he so craves? Or will his dud grandson persuade him to clean up his act in time for a feel-good ending?

If you so much as wonder what the answer might be, you are not part of the solution. You are part of the problem.

And man, oh man, does Dirty Grandpa have problems.

Even if you subtracted the seedy series of gags so insistently off-colour (such as Efron getting mistaken for a child molester at the beach) you want to file a restraining order, this movie is just not funny in any way.

For a comedy on get-a-life-support from its opening scene, that is a death sentence.