Jake Bouchard gets a date with his crush Angie Wagner. He has to cancel it for his visiting grandpa (James Caan) and his annoying outlandish war stories. The family thinks he's delusional. Angie goes missing and grandpa thinks it's a kidnapping. Using his military intelligence skills, he and the kid search for the missing girl. Secret agent Maddie Harcourt (Jessica Walter) claims that grandpa is actually delusional and his stories are fantasies. After escaping, they recruit grandpa's old crew.

The premise could be fun and there are certainly great old timers in the cast. There isn't enough flash and fun. This should be much sillier. It takes a little too long to get to the old geezers. The entire crew could be living in a secret agent old age home and they can be introduced early on when the family visits. That would give them more time to build chemistry. This needs to be fun and that's sorely missing. This great cast should have better material. The jokes aren't funny and all we're left with is a bunch of doddering old men. The kids are fine if somewhat uninspired. I want better for this cast.

Well, I don't want to be too harsh because my granddaughter picks out these flicks for some family viewing and I can't be critical to the point of alienating. But boy oh boy, this was a bit of a chore to sit through. I kept mentally comparing the Sonny Corleone James Cann with the Undercover Grandpa James Caan and it just didn't compute. It's what happens when you turn eighty and still making movies, but still. Even so, Paul Sorvino is a tad older and Louis Gossett Jr. has him by four years, so this was a real Old Timers reunion. And lest one think I'm making fun, I'll be hitting seventy myself in a couple months, so more power to these guys.

As for the story, it gets a little over the top with the fictional Krakhovians kidnapping a teenage girl because she saw them kill somebody. Guess you can't blame them, but the story could have used a different premise. The teenage actors in the film were at best adequate, while the older, former headliners deserved a better script. I saw Louis Gossett Jr. receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Hoboken International Film Festival (held in Greenwood Lake, New York!) two years ago, and he didn't receive it for stuff like this. What really blew my mind was the idea of Caan's character, ex-Major Lou Crawford, faking his own death at the end of the story so he could take off with former associate Maddy Harcourt (Jessica Walter). I guess those old timers still know how to have fun.

One upside to the picture though. My granddaughter being twelve years old at present, I suggested that something like this might be in her future. I don't mean the kidnapping part, I'm thinking more along the lines of undercover grandpa.

I didn't know what to expect when I sat down to watch this movie. And the reason why I did sit down to watch it was James Caan, pure and simple.

This movie was actually surprisingly better than I had dared to think it to be.

The storyline was good and entertaining, although somewhat predictable and generic. But it was the absurdity of the situations and the older actors that really made this an outstanding movie with their memorable performances.

There were some nice actors and actresses performing in "Undercover Grandpa", with the likes of James Caan, Louis Gossett Jr., Kenneth Welsh and Jessica Walter.

There is lots of action, well more or less taking into consideration the age of most of the people here. "Undercover Grandpa" was actually fun and wholesome entertainment for the entire family.