Old school meets new school parenting when comedy legends Billy Crystal and Bette Midler play Artie and Diane Decker, who are called in by their daughter Alice (Marisa Tomei) to help care for their three grandkids. When their parenting methods collide, the once-orderly household gets out of control.
From family filmmaker Andy Fickman (best known for “The Game Plan,” “You Again,” She’s the Man” and “Race To Witch Mountain”), “Parental Guidance” spins into a heartwarming chaos when Alice calls on her parents to help watch her kids when she needs to leave town for work. When left with their grandkids, Artie and Diane employ unexpected tactics which means using a new parenting style to help teach their grandkids how to act and behave like kids.
Written by Billy Crystal, the movie is inspired from his own experience when their granddaughters stayed with them for five days when their kids went away. “And on the sixth day, I rested. I came to the office and I said, ‘Okay, here’s the movie: it’s old school/new school. It’s trying to follow all the rules that my kids had about how to take care of the girls. And it could really be a movie for everybody; a family movie that could be really funny, which it is, and very touching, and have lessons learned. It took a long time to get this made, but here we are,” Crystal shares.
Crystal, one of the most celebrated and acclaimed personalities on and off screen when asked about his parenting style says that “The key to being a good grandparent is being a good parent first. It’s not necessarily right, just because the way things are done now, but you do have to respect the fact that they’re not your kids. So I think that’s a really important thing, is the time that you have with them has to be special. And it has to also be non-threatening and understood that you’re an extension of the parents. And then when nobody’s looking you spoil them.”
“Parental Guidance” opens January 16 from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.