Regrettably arriving too late for The Post’s annual Turkey Awards, the old-geezers-know-best comedy “Parental Guidance” kicks off with a mean-spirited joke about an overweight woman and heads downhill from there.
Artie (Billy Crystal) has just been canned from his longtime gig as a baseball announcer when he and wife Diane (Bette Midler) are called into service by their seldom-seen daughter Alice (Marisa Tomei). Her husband, Phil (Tom Everett Scott), is up for an award for the fully-automated, voice-activated house he’s designed.
While these ultra-modern parents fly out to the ceremony, Artie and Diane will watch the couple’s three tightly wound kids (Bailee Madison, Joshua Rush and Kyle Harrison Breitkopf).
Playing like a big-screen adaptation of an Andy Rooney rant, the movie bravely takes on the scourge of today’s wimp-ified parenting. “I think he breast-fed the kids,” Artie cracks to his wife about Phil. Because guys who nurture their kids aren’t real men! Hilarious! (Also, no huge mystery why Alice keeps her distance.)
Artie and Diane’s initial gift of super-soakers for the grandkids isn’t received all that warmly by Alice and Phil. What kind of messed-up parent doesn’t want their kid to play with giant toy guns? Lunacy!
And when Alice informs her dad that they advise their children to “use your words” when they’re upset rather than telling them to quit whining, Artie’s stupefied: How do you get ’em to shut up, then?
Yes, there are points to be made about how today’s parents can run to tedious excesses, and the challenges of bridging the chasm between two generations’ very different approaches to child-rearing.
Those points are obscured when you punctuate scenes with Crystal getting whacked in the crotch with a baseball bat and puking on a little kid’s face.
Small roles are in equally poor taste: Gedde Watanabe shows up as the excitable owner of a Chinese food joint, while skateboarding legend Tony Hawk’s cameo has him wiping out in a puddle of pee.
And let’s never speak again of the scene in which Crystal perches on a toilet with his grandson in a public bathroom, singing “Come out, come out, Mr. Doody.”
Director Andy Fickman (“You Again,” tellingly) amps up the Rooney vibe for the movie’s resolution, where all kid problems can be solved by playing Kick the Can, listening to 1950s baseball announcer recordings and living in fear of a spanking. Just as they did in the good old days.
To quote the man himself, “Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.”
Would that were the case with “Parental Guidance.”
sstewart@nypost.com