One great thing about grandparents is that they don’t change much from one decade to another. In the movies they’re either touching, heartwarming, or just plain funny, or all of those combined. A grandparent in the movies can be any which way the writers make them but it takes a truly great actor to make them endearing to the audience. Most of the time when you watch a grandparent in the movies you’d like to see someone that’s caring, that’s been through the harder stages of their lives and has learned how to show compassion and a great deal of understanding to their fellow human beings. Then you get the movie versions and sometimes you can’t stop laughing or you find out that having gone through those hard times the grandparents have become slightly bitter and very jaded.
Here are some of the greatest grandparents of the 90s.
5. Happy Gilmore – Grandma Gilmore
Grandma kind of doesn’t seem like she knows what’s going on in this film but she’s pretty sharp, she just knows what she can and can’t do, like paying the IRS the taxes she owes. When she’s kicked out of her home however she has at least one thing to rely on, the fact that she raised her grandson to care so deeply about her and her welfare. He even feels like a heel for having to put her in a nursing home, though she’s good enough to keep him from worrying about her when she discovers that the home is actually an elderly sweatshop run by a crooked caregiver that threatens the residents into working various jobs to keep the money rolling in.
4. Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood – Grandma
This grandma is just flat out crazy since quite honestly there aren’t a lot of grandparents that would get up and just start boxing with a younger person and not expect to get knocked down. It’s all in fun thankfully with this movie since it’s a giant spoof of a lot of different films but it’s still depiction of a pot-smoking, foul-mouthed, gun-toting grandma that doesn’t take lip from anyone and will gladly pop off whenever she feels like it. In some ways a lot of people wish that they had a grandma like her, but then again some of us might think that it’s best to enjoy her when we’re older, not so much when we’re little children and need to rely on her.
3. Menace II Society – Grandpapa
This is a man that knows how he wants his home to be and will expect it to be that way, along with everyone in it. Caine is perhaps one of the worst examples of what happens when a young boy is exposed to death, drugs, and crime when he’s still too young to know the difference between what’s wrong and what’s right. His grandpapa does what he can in order to teach Caine the right and the wrong way to live his life, but all the Bible verses and all the understanding in the world don’t seem to do anything when it comes to reaching Caine. When he finally throws Caine out of the house the old man seems anything but sorry, he seems relieved.
2. Grumpy Old Men – John Gustafson
John is that kind of grandpa that loves his daughter, loves his granddaughter, but can’t stand his son-in-law. In fact you might even say that he can stand his neighbor and friend Max more than he can stand his daughter’s husband, and that’s saying something. His attempts to duel with Max and still be an attentive grandfather when he needs to be are pretty well-received since his granddaughter loves him dearly and likely thinks he’s the perfect grandpa. That’s one thing about grandparents that a lot of us tend to see even if it’s not always true, they make it seem that nothing’s wrong in their lives for the sake of the grandchildren.
1. Grumpier Old Men – Grandpa Gustafson
Burgess Meredith played the epitome of what a grandparent is to some people. He was kind but he had a foul mouth, he was sweet but he had a definite bad boy side to him, and he was the kind of guy that would speak his mind and not really care what anyone thought. When you hit a certain age it becomes less a privilege and more a right to say what comes to mind as you’ve earned it just for having stuck around for so long. There are limits to this obviously but so long as a person doesn’t push them too far then they’re at least a bit entitled to be a little rowdy and racy. While he wasn’t the perfect person he was the person that his family needed and the funny guy that was always there for a laugh.
Grandparents are the best sometimes.
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