"Dirty Grandpa" has a star-studded cast: alongside Robert De Niro, Zac Efron, and Aubrey Plaza were Jason Mantzoukas, Dermot Mulroney, Zoey Deutch, Julianne Hough, and Danny Glover. Despite the wall-to-wall-offensive content and terrible reception from critics, "Dirty Grandpa" earned almost ten times what it cost to make. By the time it departed theaters, the film made more than $105 million on a modest $11.5 million budget, much of which probably went to pay the salaries of the talented cast.
Jason Bailey of Flavorwire compared the film unfavorably to director and lead actor Tom Green's 2001 comedy "Freddy Got Fingered," and noted that "Dirty Grandpa" was the low point of De Niro's late-career work. Bailey rightfully criticized the film's constant punching down on people of color, the disabled, LGBTQ individuals, and women.
Bailey concluded, "'Dirty Grandpa' is one of those movies that's equal parts bad and baffling; it seems to have been written and directed by alien life forms who read YouTube comment sections for a week and drew these conclusions about human behavior."
