Saturday Movies: Parental Guidance (2012)

Parental Guidance is a feel-good family movie, so it's probably going to be more disliked than liked. There are some moments that are silly for kids and there is humor mixed in for adults, so adults will cringe at the humor intended for the kids and the kids will be confused by the humor for the adults. There is a cute ending though and it deals with the very true topic in today's world of how different an age gap can make two groups of people.

When Artie and Diane's daughter needs to leave town with her husband to support him in receiving a reward for work she enlists them to watch her children, but their style of parenting difference vastly from hers, which borders on overbearing. So when they spend a week it is difficult for their daughter to let go and leave but when she does the grandparents are having to find a way to merge their old way of parenting with the new way of parenting that her daughter practices for her children.


There are some cute moments and cheesy moments, but that is what happens when you try to shoot a family movie. The good news is that this is a highly appropriate film that you don't have to worry about watching around your family or kids. It doesn't have any moments that get sexual and never uses bad language that your kids might pick up for use later. The acting is decent from most the cast, and the child actors were better cast than many movies you will see.

Billy Crystal and Bette Midler are the leads, and they were very well cast together. They have chemistry as the grandparents, Artie and Diane and while they are trying to reconnect to their family they still have chemistry with one another as well. I haven't seen Tom Everrett Scott in much besides this role as Phil, but he does a decent job, but you can he isn't really a main focus of the movie. There is also Marisa Tomei as their daughter Alice, and there are a few times she feels overacted, but that seems to just be her style of acting as she came off the same in Crazy Stupid Love.

It's also very rare you see kids who can act, but all the kids in this movie seem to really try to take notice of developing their characters and seem pretty immersed in them. Bailee Madison is Harper, and does a good job, but for some reason she is borderline annoying at times. She seems to be the only actress that is younger in the movie that I've seen in other movies. The biggest thing is that Alice's way of parenting really does seem annoying. You don't want Artie and Diane to have to merge their style, because they way they do things is just odd especially feeding the youngest kids imagination that he has a real friend. It just seems a little insane.

This movie was better than expected and I did like the little message at the end. If you have an opposition for cute, feel good, family films though then I would pass as it does get cheesy and it does have the zany over the top moments to try to get any kids that might be watching to laugh. The two leads still have it though, and Billy Crystal can at least make the adults laugh.

Rating 7 of 10.