After a fall at a local bar, an elderly alcoholic asks his adult grandsons for one last favor. Seems several years ago he took five hookers to a remote hotel suite known as the Pony Room and spent the entire evening satisfying their every need. Now, nearing death and continuously soused to the gills, he wants Ed and Burt to take him back there for a weekend of reminiscing. The road trip will be difficult, especially with Grandpa’s lack of control (bowel or otherwise), but what waits there is even more disconcerting - a cursed can of chicken noodle soup.

Really three very fine films in one, Grandpa proves that Giuseppe Andrews is more than just poop jokes and sexual assaults. Sure, the material inside the Pony Room, co-stars Miles Dougal and Tyree trading liquor-induced, curse-laden barbs and corporeal tales out of college is right up the filmmaker’s foul mouthed alley. And the road trip element, with its diaper changing pitstop and hilarious In-N-Out Burger stand-off is again standard issue Andrews. But the moments between Ed and hired paramour Tiffany Naylor argue for a maturity and romantic atmosphere that - all oddball dialogue aside - shows how serious he can be. There is a warmth here, and a tenderness, that we just don’t see in the rest of his oeuvre. And Naylor’s bikini dance is sure sexy in all its natural big girl beauty. While his amateur actors are always up to the challenge of his crazed comedic conversations, our wining and dining couple deliver a kind of simmer onscreen chemistry that’s almost impossible to manufacture.

Which, of course, proves Andrews’ point. Grandpa is about losing touch with your past, about living off memories instead of striving for new experiences. When Ed abandons his relatives at the remote hotel, taking off to be by himself, we understand the main message. While going back to re-experience a fabled tryst might be fun, created a new one with someone special is far more compelling. These scenes between Ed and Naylor are nuanced, beautifully acted, and well shot. They match perfectly with the handheld mayhem of Dougal and Tyree romping around the Pony Room. Even the ending is unusual here, suggesting a kind of karmic reward (and plausible penalty) for each character’s particular path. Oddly enough, this is the one time when the entire soup subplot really doesn’t work. It seems thrown in haphazardly and doesn’t really flow with the rest of the narrative. Still, for what it offers elsewhere, this is a fine capper to a trio of talent-filled tales.

-Bill Gibron