Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“The War with Grandpa” opens with a feisty encounter between Robert De Niro and a supermarket scanner.
The supermarket has eliminated all its cashiers, and De Niro’s Ed, a senior citizen who wants to check out his cart full of groceries, can’t get the beeping, Siri-voiced scanner to cooperate, which leaves him testy in all the familiar yet agreeably scowling and disgruntled De Niro ways.
He winds up walking out and stealing the groceries — not because he’s a thief, but because he’s so irritated (anyone who hates self-checkout, and the corporate greed it represents, will cheer him on).
He then gets into a yogurt-hurling fight in the parking lot. So far, so De Niro-as-raging-codger proud. But that’s about all.
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