Andy Griffith’s Last Role Was In Raunchy Sex Comedy

Most people remember sitcom superstar Andy Griffith’s last hurrah in show business as feisty Southern lawyer Ben Matlock. But while that show ended in 1995, Griffith kept chugging along, appearing in movies like 2007’s Waitress and TV shows like Dawson’s Creek. But the final entry on his IMDb might be his most surprising: the naughty sex comedy Play the Game. 

“A young ladies’ man teaches his dating tricks to his lonely, widowed grandfather, and plays his best mind games to meet the woman of his dreams,” reads the movie’s logline. Griffith plays Grandpa Joe in what sounds like a Hallmark movie recycling an old rom-com plot, but unlike those syrupy, made-for-TV stories, Play the Game uses its PG-13 rating to ensure that Griffith gets his Mayberrys off. 

To make Griffith’s sexploits even more entertaining, his bed partner is none other than Liz Sheridan, better known as Jerry’s mom, Helen, on Seinfeld. If you’ve ever wondered what Sheridan could do if only Larry David allowed her to dress in fire-engine-red lingerie, Play the Game’s got you covered.

“It’s too bad things get so crude,” writes one critic on Rotten Tomatoes. But let’s be honest — why check out Andy Griffith in a sex comedy if he isn’t going to have sex? Play the Game doesn’t disappoint, with Sheridan and Griffith hopping in the sack and getting right down to business. When Sheridan slips Joe some Viagra and starts kissing her way southward, the scene is played for laughs as the camera focuses on Griffith’s dumbfounded face. 

“Edna, where where where… Where are you… Edna, look out, look out! You’re getting close… Oh god!”  

Andy’s final expression looks like Barney Fife discovering that the old Rimshaw house is h-h-haunted. 

Not everyone found that scene charming. “I never contemplated what Andy Griffith’s face would look like during orgasm,” wrote Salt Lake Tribune’s Sean P. Means, “and I curse this atrocious and shoddy romantic comedy for making Griffith do it and making anyone watch it.”

Roger Ebert wasn’t that into it either, titling his review: “Andy Griffith and Seinfeld’s Mom: I Would Really Rather Not Know.” Ebert likened watching the movie to a story he’d recently heard about senior living. “I have a good friend whose own dad discovered Viagra in a retirement home and would call his son almost daily to recount his latest adventures,” Ebert wrote. “He called once when I was in the room with my friend, who urgently told him, ‘Dad, I’ve told you, I don’t want to know!’” 

Others praised the comedy's senior-sex positivity. And according to the book Andy and Don, Griffith had a great time filming his final movie. “Andy, ribald as ever, reveled in the sexually charged dialogue,” wrote author Daniel de Vise. It was the only time in his career that Griffith got to deliver lines like this: “Your grandmother is the only woman I ever had sexual relations with. And after last night, I realized that, bless her soul, she didn’t have a clue in the bedroom. But that Edna, she’s a real professional.”