'Grandma's Boy' goes up in smoke

A good stoner flick is hard to do. There are the truly good, there are the so-bad-they're-good, and there are the mediocre. "Grandma's Boy" is right in the middle of the mediocre. \nAllen Covert, who has worked in 12 of Adam Sandler's 15 films, plays Alex, a 35-year-old video game tester. After his roommate squanders their rent money on hookers and they get kicked out of their apartment, Alex moves in with his grandmother, Lilly (Doris Roberts of "Everybody Loves Raymond") and her two roommates. The rest of Alex's life is filled by his Peter Pan-ish co-workers, his bombed-out weed dealer and the sexy hired gun brought in to teach the video game boys about deadlines. JP (Joel Moore), the child-prodigy game designer, is meant to be the creep we can laugh at, but he's so clearly in need of heavy therapy that the effect is squirming, not laughter. \nCovert is funny, but badly miscast. In the film, he's 35, but he looks older. And in that vein, 35 is too old for a character in a good stoner flick. Twenty-something stoners are funny. Thirty-something stoners are a little sad. The supporting cast is dominated by Roberts as Alex's grandmother, Shirley Knight as the batty Bea and Shirley Jones (of "Partridge Family" fame) as the sexpot of the trio. Linda Cardellini offers up a nice turn as Samantha, the hired gun, and she does a good job as a girl in a geekboy world. \nIn true Sandleresque style, there are plenty of weed references and lots of old-lady sex jokes (including some surprisingly touching hook-ups), but for the most part, the laughs were few and far between. There were laugh-out-loud moments, but the interim was largely boring. Most of the funny moments were those that are in the trailer, including the line, "Don't judge me, monkey," which threatens to become a catchphrase. I sincerely hope it doesn't. But a lack of laughs is just where the problems start in "Grandma's Boy." The pacing was off, the characters were underdeveloped and unsympathetic and it targets a really, really narrow demographic. Yes, I can laugh at a tit joke. No, I cannot laugh at 15 in a row. \nNobody expected "Grandma's Boy" to be great cinema. But if you're going to do a bad movie, at least make it so bad it's good.