IN our nanny state, the MA15+ classification for films not meeting the criteria for R but too strong for M puts parents in charge of deciding what adolescent Johnny and Mary may see and imposes a duty on exhibitors to make judgment calls about the age of unaccompanied youthful patrons.

For this film starring Robert de Niro, crammed with about 15 per cent gutter language, drug supply and use, moments cataloguing just about every variation to which genitals may be put in the quest for satisfaction, and overt co-operation between law enforcers and law breakers, MA is totally appropriate – in theory, at least.

This little homily is offered less as a warning to parents of adolescents than an attempt to explain how a film about a grandfather who, the day after his wife’s funeral, whisks away his grandson (Zac Ephron), about to marry next Saturday, to drive him to Florida to farewell an old army buddy whose days are about to run out, went into profit in its first week.

That’s not a bad result for any film. It embraces the full range of dramatic possibilities, from raucous laughter to mournful grief, domestic warmth to heartbreaking disappointment, gentle affection to terrible brutality. All delivered in a matrix of incredible stupidity that coalesces into a kind of rationality as The End gets nigh.

For John Phillips, the opportunity to write a screenplay for directing by Dan Mazer, whose career to date has not deviated from the path defined by Sacha Baron Cohen, may well have felt like being given the key to a candy store. For de Niro, playing Grandpa is a doddle. In his early 70s, he looks better stripped to the waist than many would-be-if-they-could-be actors half his age.

At Hoyts and Dendy