Tod
and Lani’s grandmother is sort of the Norma Desmond of home shopping television.
The former movie star has lost her touch hawking cubic zirconium, so she has
had her loyal grandson liquidate the furnishings of their once palatial
Hollywood mansion. However, trusting Tod could very well be a grave mistake in
Robert Logevall’s The Grand Son (trailer here), which releases
today on VOD.
Things
are getting so bad, Judy’s grandchildren might have to get jobs—real jobs, not
the bogus acting gigs Lani is constantly auditioning for. Tod knows his
grandmother will soon get the axe from the shopping network, because he is
sleeping with her producer Barbara. He would like Judy to pass the baton to
Lani, but it is not in her nature to step aside. For their part, Barbara and
the network executives have little to zero interest in Lani, so it will all
take a good deal of string-pulling on his part. Fortunately, Tod has a
convenient scapegoat for his schemes in Jacob, the surly boy toy house painter
both grandmother and granddaughter have been using in bed.
Grand Son (two words) is no Sunset Boulevard, that’s for sure, but it is entertainingly lurid,
in a gleefully amoral kind of way. This is the kind of over-the-top family
drama that unleashes the full-contact Dynasty-style
catty-slapping before breakfast. It is all very much a guilty pleasure, but you
have to guffaw at its energy and shamelessness.
Perhaps
the best thing going for the film is Lesley Ann Warren (Oscar nominated for Victor/Victoria) who is perfectly cast
and looks terrific as Grandma Judy, the Danielle Steel character from Hell.
Fabianne Therese (John Dies at the End,
Sequence Break) is so relentlessly petulant and entitled as Lani, it really
is funny. Rhys Wakefield also makes quite a creepy little sociopath as Tod.
However, Nathan Keyes is so drearily dull as Jacob, it is hard to believe he
could last thirty seconds amid such flamboyantly nasty company.
