Billy Crystal has been sadly absent from the movies for nearly 10 years now, popping up briefly in Tooth Fairy and lending a voice to Cars as a Pixar in-joke, but otherwise doing, well, whatever it is you do when you've had decades of success and can afford to take some time off. Part of that hiatus, though, was spent developing with Paramount the comedy Us & Them, about a grandfather forced to adjust to the "new" rules of parenting when caring for his grandkids for a week. He'd been close to getting the film made at Par when John Lesher left his job as president and left the film go; Crystal quickly turned it around and set it up at Fox, which is the studio that brought you Tooth Fairy and is always happy for another innocuous family-friendly project.
Now they've brought on the king of innocuous family-friendly projects to actually get this film made. According to THR Andy Fickman has signed on to direct Us & Them, with Crystal on board to play the grandfather. Fickman has made all kinds of movies you probably didn't care enough to see, from She's The Man to this fall's comedy You Again.
I hold out hope that Us & Them will be a little worthwhile, mostly due to decades of goodwill toward Billy Crystal and way too many viewings of City Slickers, but I instantly recoil from movies about how everything was better in the "good old days" when you could give kids a spanking and make them believe you were God. Yes, modern parents are ridiculous, but so is every other generation of parents before them. I like Billy Crystal and all, but a new iteration of Kids Say The Darndest Things really isn't what we need right now-- or ever.
