Movie Review: 'Parental Guidance'

When a film has got a stellar cast headed by Billy Crystal (Monsters Inc., When Harry Met Sally), Bette Midler (The Stepford Wives, Beaches) and Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei (Crazy, Stupid, Love; Anger Management), it’s one you shouldn’t miss.

This January, Twentieth Century Fox presents its new family comedy, Parental Guidance, about how Alice (Tomei) is forced to ask her parents Artie (Crystal) and Diane (Midler) to look after her three kids while she and her husband Phil (Tom Everett Scott) take a trip for work.

Having been estranged from their grandchildren for so long, Artie and Diane want to turn things around by being the best grandparents they can be while Alice and her husband Phil are away from home. As Diane puts it, “Grandparenting is a second chance!”

The only problem is, Alice and her parents don’t exactly see eye to eye when it comes to their parenting approach. Whereas Alice believes in the magic of words, empowering her children with their decisions, and resorting to the aid of technology and professionals to raise and educate her children, Artie and Diane have always deemed tough love, fun, songs and games to be central to parenting.

Thus, the differences between old school and modern parenting take center stage in this family-friendly film speckled with the expert comic timing and the wonderful screen tandem of Crystal and Midler, the endearing characters of the grandkids Harper (Bailey Madison), Turner (Joshua Rush), Barker Simmons (Kyle Harrison Breitkopf, and the overanxious but deeply motherly Alice.

Get ready to laugh your heart out with countless antics from the young characters and with Crystal’s expertly delivered punch lines, made even more hilarious with Midler’s infectious energy and enthusiasm.