Parental Guidance (2012)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Let's be realistic.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Billy Crystal's movie career has been hit or miss. Alright, mostly miss. Too bad there's no three strike rule in Hollywood. (Although why Crystal never had a TV show, where his lovable cozy charm might work, I don't know.) Here his talents are wasted. It's painfully bad. Blame the writing. This movie isn't the worst I've ever sat through. I mean, it's no 'Jerry'. But it's bad. If you have a ten minute rule about watching movies then you might want to consider having a five minute rule. But frankly, this doesn't pass the smell test after one minute. They keep selling it as a family movie. Maybe the family from 'Honey Boo Boo' but for anyone else it's a stinker.

This movie brings together the modern feel good holistic parenting as compared to the dictatorship parenting of yesteryear. In it, the grandparents are asked to come care for the grandkids after the parents are converting a business trip to a mini-vacation. What is really good is the paring of Billy Crystal and Bette Midler as the grandparents. I was reminded of how funny Crystal can be. Lot of gag bits but humorous to see how the family dynamic plays out. It reminds you that parenting is trial and error and there is no real way to mess up the children's lives. This movie is fun and should be perfect for any family who has a challenge for teaching intergenerational lessons.

My expectations were high considering this movie had three major actors all of which are noted for comedic roles. My enthusiasm dropped within the first 15 minutes and only nosedived thereafter. It didn't take long to notice how considerably bad Bette Midler, Billy Crystal and Marisa Tomei's acting was in this overly drawn out and boring movie.All actors seemed to to lack talent and struggled through lines. There were no moments I could honestly state were funny. It was mediocre at best. There seemed to be a huge disconnect between characters and the plot was not only unoriginal but had no deeming qualities. Marisa Tomei had an appearance of being tired or worn out which is quite the opposite from her usually bright and peppy self. I loved watching a lot of Bette's past performances but she definitely didn't shine in this role. There was a huge lack of enthusiasm reflected by the actors and it was obvious they missed many comedic punches. The entire movie lacked direction and the few lines that were somewhat funny seemed forced. Some of the elements of this movie I found to be degrading toward the adults and children alike. I would compare this to a thrown together made for television movie not a movie worthy for the big screen. It is a low grade movie at best.The kids in this movie were cute although considered a bit irksome by other adults watching this movie with me. The only part I felt drawn to was when the one son conflicted with bullying due to his stuttering had the courage to overcome his awkwardness to publicly express himself. The entire scenario relating to the imaginary kangaroo friend of the youngest boy was utterly ridiculous.I am confused to who is actually the targeted audience. I couldn't recommend as a movie an adult would find interesting or a family type movie but this film might appeal on some level to young children. For those that haven't seen this movie but still are compelled to do so should rent not buy a DVD.

Hello!First off, I would like to say that EVERY potential film director and script writer should watch this film......they should watch this film to learn EVERY POSSIBLE mistake that you can make in writing and filming a family oriented movie.Don't get me wrong, I like Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, and Marisa Tomei, the three principal actors, quite a bit. Billy Crystal's small performance in "The Princess Bride" as Miracle Max, is hilarious, and one of the high points of the movie. There are a number of other movies that they have done solid, good work in.Unfortunately, though, this film wasn't one of them.Billy Crystal would seem to be most at fault here. He is listed as one of the "Producers", so presumably he had some control over the final script. How he let this script abomination get to the filming stage, is beyond me. He made this film at the age of 64, and I would say this turkey has just about tanked his fading film career; and he has taken Bette Midler and Marisa Tomei along with him.The characters in this film act like sub-grade morons, and somehow manage to insult just about every age group there is. In itself, this would actually appear to be a minor achievement, as I don't remember ANY other movie that I have seen, actually insult so many age groups in a single movie.If you have seen other family movies, don't worry, EVERY BAD cliché you have EVER seen about families, is in this movie. They have neatly collected them all together, for your viewing displeasure, so you don't have to watch dozens of other bad family movies, to see them all.For a comedy, you might call it "comedy light" or "comedy free", as there were virtually NO funny moments, or laughs over the entire movie.In the end credits of the movie, they said that 14,000 jobs were created by this movie, with over 600,000 man hours spent in the production.WHERE did all this time and effort supposedly GO? This movie was worse than even an average made-for-TV, very low budget, family production.600,000 hours to make this God awful STINKER? GEEZ! It staggers the imagination! Frankly, if I were involved with the production of this stinking pile of you-know-what, I WOULDN'T plaster my face all over the end credits, as they did with the actors, their families, and the production staff, and their families, in this movie.I'd wear a paper bag over my head, instead, and pretend that I had nothing what-so-ever to do with this movie.The script is SO, BAD, BAD, BAD, that it is a little difficult to figure how bad the acting was. Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, and Marisa Tomei were obviously NOT in top form, however, the dialogue was so reekingly BAD, that it was difficult to tell how much was bad acting, and how much was the terrible script.I pardon Bette Midler a bit, here. Even though she was listed second in the credits, she was given virtually nothing of importance to do in the movie. I expected some hilarious moments between her and Billy Crystal, but there were virtually NO humorous moments between them.Andy Fickman, as director, deserves more than a few barbs, here. Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, and Marisa Tomei are decent actors, but it sure wasn't obvious from this movie. I would say Andy Fickman was instrumental in the reekingly BAD quality of this movie.Run, don't walk, as far away from this stinking pile of... "film", as possible.My 2¢ worth.Karl