Movies About Grumpy Old Guys

By: Dan Kidder

I watched "Gran Tourino" and "Up" over the weekend, and I've consequently decided to be a grumpy old man (possibly racist) who eventually befriends a weird kid (possibly fat) and ends up sacrificing something for the sake of the friendship.

But first...to get old and grumpy...check and check.

It's a bit odd how similar the two movies are; if you've never seen them and don't want to have it ruined...well then you came to the wrong place.

Right off the bat, both old guys lose their wives within the first 10 minutes. They both are now dealing with life without a longtime companion, and they're both understandably grumpy about things.

Then they both meet an annoying neighbor kid...in GT he's obviously Asian, and Clint Eastwood has all kinds of fun racial slurs to employ (some of which he had to have made up), while in Up the chubby kid looks like he could kind of be Asian...? I'm not entirely sure I can talk about this since I'm really, really white. Moving on.

In both, it turns out that the annoying kid is somehow thrust into the old guy's life, and they find a way to coexist with minimal talking and a few humorous interactions that invariably leave the old guy frustrated and even grumpier.

There are more parallels, as the neighbor girl corresponds with the bird Kevin (I love that the fat kid named the bird Kevin, and it turns out to be a female), the Asian gang kids driving the ghetto Honda are similar to the army of dogs, and Clint Eastwood's WWII M-1 Garand rifle is used much in the same way as Carl Frederikson's metal walker.

My facebook friend Jack pointed out that Up is pretty much the non-racist version of Gran Tourino. I think he's right, and it's funny because Hollywood always seems to come up with ideas in pairs like this. We had Paul Blart: Mall Cop followed by Observe & Report. It goes all the way back to the late 80s, when Turner & Hooch came out after K9 (which launched the career of Jim Belushi into the stratosphere for good!). Then came Wyatt Earp against Tombstone (we all know who won that one), Dante's Peak vs. Volcano (James Bond vs. Tommy Lee Jones!), Armageddon vs. Deep Impact (thanks to Aerosmith, we all lost), A Bug's Life vs. Ants (which nobody cared about unless you were six at the time), Mission To Mars vs. Red Planet (Val Kilmer! Gary Sinise! Tom Sizemore! The Oscars were buzzing that year!), and The Prestige vs. The Illusionist (Wolverine does magic...or something...I only saw one of those two).

The point is...a good idea is still a good idea (or bad, depending) even if a bunch of people have it at the same relative time. And since Hollywood has always been, and will always be, the denizen of originality and substance of our culture, I'm sure we can expect more of the same.

Oh, and one could make further comparisons between Gran Tourino and Up...such as...the gang leader and the Alpha dog both have funny voices; both Asian kids (Russell and "Toad") are trying to earn something by helping the old guy; neither of the kids has a good home life, including the absence of a father, which explains why they gravitate towards the old guy; and both old guys have their prized possession (the car and the Adventure Book) that they end up sharing with the kid. I'm sure there are more.

But I found it interesting, and if you have seen/will see both, it's a fun little way to compare the two. Since I'm a grumpy old guy like Clint and Carl, I found both movies good, but they should have ended with the old guy finally getting some peace and quiet. Maybe if Carl had his old WWII rifle...

(Thanks to screenjunkies.com for the list of suspiciously similar movies...check it out at http://www.screenjunkies.com/movienews/11-pairs-suspiciously-similar-movies to see how many you remember...)