Team Marco Parent Guide

Marco (Owen Vaccaro) is on a quest! He’s determined to make it to level 100 of a video game designed by his father. If he does it before the end of the summer, his dad has promised to take him to an exclusive tech convention. But life has a way of making other plans, and following an unfortunate house fire, Marco’s recently widowed grandfather, Nonno (Anthony Patellis) has moved right into Marco’s bedroom. Apart from the personal space issues which arise, Nonno has no patience for Marco’s interest in video games (and his father), or his general dislike of the outdoors. With Marco’s mom, Anna (Anastasia Ganias) at work, Nonno sees an opportunity to expose Marco to a little more of life and steals him away to play bocce ball with some old friends. But the inter-family tensions won’t stop there…

There is no shortage of problems with this movie, but my personal favorite is that Grandpa is a bully for most of the runtime. He doesn’t really seem to care much about Marco as a person, focusing instead on habits he doesn’t understand. Marco spends some time on his tablet and gaming console, which seems to infuriate his grandfather – not that it’s any of his business anyway. Were Marco devoid of parental attention, Nonno might have a point, but Anna has Marco limited to two hours a day of screen time, which looks like responsible parenting to me. What’s even less pleasant is Nonno’s constant disdain towards people with different dietary options. Whether it’s soy milk or gluten free food, there isn’t a legitimate medical dietary necessity that dear old Nonno can’t find time to mock. He’s a thoroughly unpleasant character and makes me pity Marco. Not that I’m a particular fan of Marco, but between the two, he comes out on top.

Strong as my feelings are about Nonno’s odious behaviors, none of that really matters because the writing is so poor that, with the exception of Anna, these characters don’t feel like real people. This is one of those unoriginal movies where old people don’t understand anything that’s happened since the end of World War II, and young people are hypersensitive whiners who have no legitimate problems of their own. Apart from being inaccurate, it’s excessively lazy. What’s more, it only serves to exacerbate tensions between the generations, as if social media weren’t already doing just fine at that, thanks very much. Promoting intergenerational conflict because you’re too lazy to come up with a more nuanced plot is not the mark of a good screenwriter.

There aren’t any content issues that would make Team Marco unsuitable for children, apart from the utter inanity. Nonno is occasionally seen smoking, and there are a few terms of deity, but apart from that there’s nothing happening here. At all. In any sense. Ever. This is ninety minutes of mean-spirited, pointless gibberish. I’d rather watch someone trim their toenails on the bus than watch this nonsense. At least that’s over in a few minutes and isn’t going to try to sell me on a Google home assistant.