
Jason Krawczyk’s latest film Don’t Mess With Grandma tears apart the conventions of its genre and focuses on a home invasion with a deeply intertwining story that stays away from paranormal elements. This story does a good job of entering the realm of originality that other films fail to achieve, something Grandma and Krawczyk do exceptionally well.Â
The short film The Trusted Trays follows Jasper, voiced by Michael Jai White as a warm and loving character who silently works obsessively for his intimidating grandmother played by Jackie Richardson. Others may see it as to clock in hours for her, she lives two hours away. His grandmother’s sink gets damaged in the dead of the night and while trying to fix it things take an interesting turn.
Skipping over the home invasion alone, which some people would consider as scary like some movies, the horror turns into dry humor and over-the-top stylistic brutal action thanks to the phenomenal portrayal done by White who happens to be equally as funny as he is a fighter (not that this is a surprise to those who have seen Black Dynamite). The robbers could never have the upper hand the rest of the narrative is simply not that interesting or captivating. Instead, Krawczyk employs such strategies. In the few instances when it is indeed comedic throughout the movie, much of it seems incoherently patched together and stretches due to what would seem to be satire. Krawczyk does not clarify the reason why the robbers choose Gran as their target, this fact does however introduce a small mystique to the events since the lack of context is somewhat blurred.
It’s amusing towards the end that this film is solely targeted towards one theme and that is solely targeted at comedy and Grandma does exceptionally well in this regard. Jasper For sure, Jasper is comical, especially, when speaking to Stan and his team, who does a fair amount of tongue running as well as bullet shooting. Holy Moly! Are you sure it has been a long time since a lot of stumbling idiots worked in harmony? The film pays close attention to these idiotic criminals’ attempts to break into Grandma’s house and the portion of the film when Jasper repeatedly ensures that they are thrown out of the house by the use of both doors and windows, is pretty fantastic! Krawczyk handles the group quite well and enables each of the group to shine without fail but one would think he steals every frame as he floats around the cast member. So this partly results in Zane being seriously underplayed and the rest of the ensemble is given far too much attention.
Although Zane, who spends the greater part of this film with a roll of toilet paper crammed between his battered rear end, is a comic, he is not as good as White but still pretty funny.
All the same, it is White who carries the weight of the film, but looking at Grandma, one not only recalls that brilliant guy’s genius but also wonders how Americans have mishandled that genius. I recall a few occasions where Krawczyk’s scripts were less than flattering to the actor, for example, when Jasper all but drones on about his past, which like all great things can be overused, however, at least in this instance, everything that White does is so charming that one can tolerate the transition even when it gets a bit complicated. And we haven’t even started on Rufus, Granna’s dog that started off being ferocious toward Jasper but eventually changed and later in the film aided Jasper in his adventure defeating the robbers. It is this bond, rather than the one between Jasper and Granna, which eventually becomes the emotional focus of the film where no one had thought it would go.
Don’t Mess With Grandma is yet another solid offering from Tubi, whom I consider an underrated streamer and a place to go for low-budget genre films that are worth watching. Krawczyk’s work includes some touching moments, laugh-out-loud battles, and decent Massachusetts Bay deep-south gore that I am sure will get a lot of laughs.
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