In the predictably inert, if not explicitly vile, geriatric buddy movie Going in Style, Michael Caine plays an octogenarian prole who is about to lose his home to a heartless bank. His cashflow problems necessitate the obligatory senior tete-a-tete with the obligatory insensitive bank manager, a stock character previously seen in Saint Vincent and Drag Me to Hell. Dissatisfied with the result of their little chinwag, Caine and his fellow retirees Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin decide to rob the bank.

Going in Style was co-produced by Steven Mnuchin, a hedge-fund manager recently named secretary of the US treasury by the irrepressible Donald Trump. During the financial crisis of 2009, Mnuchin made a fortune for himself by investing in a mortgage bank that had a nasty habit of foreclosing on peoples’ homes. In fact, he invested in several of these enterprises. Anyone who thinks the Age of Irony is dead should think again.

Going in Style, a drab remake of a 1979 film that was equally pointless but somewhat less flabby, is the latest entry in a genre that includes everything from Secondhand Lions to A Man Called Ove to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. That is, the sort of manipulative, nauseatingly heartwarming films that always seem to star Michael Caine and Maggie Smith, even when they do not.

The themes of these films about grumpy geriatrics are interchangeable. The world I knew is gone; nobody respects me any more; I can’t figure out how to delete my email; I’m having trouble with my plumbing; it’s time for me to go out and hang myself or rob a bank or shoot somebody. And, oh yeah, what’s an avatar?

Such films profess to be sympathetic toward older people while subjecting them to merciless ridicule. At their best (the assorted Marigold Hotels), they are sappy and contrived; at worst, they are vulgar and stupid (Dirty Grandpa). Their very existence calls to mind the old chestnut: “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” For there is nothing in the world madder than paying to see a film about factory workers losing their homes when you know that the film was funded by a man who helped to put factory workers out on the street. Unless you yourself are one of the factory workers who lost their home, which makes things really nutty and postmodern. All of this suggests that there are depths to Hollywood’s odiousness that have not yet been plumbed. But they will be. Just wait till Mnuchin gets back from Washington.

Films in this repellent genre exist because the moviegoing public is intoxicated by the concept of ersatz empowerment: if you can’t work up the nerve to tell the bank to go screw itself, get Morgan Freeman to do it for you instead. It also helps that there are loads of classy, mostly British, actors who are more than happy to go through the motions in these no-heavy-lifting dramas. In the history of going through the motions, few actors have done so more consistently, more reliably and more motionlessly than Caine. But these days, Freeman is definitely giving him a run for his money.

No country for old men: Michael Caine (again) with Harvey Keitel in Youth. Photograph: Gianni Fiorito

“Sayonara senior films”, as those of us past the age of 65 refer to them, are easy to make, as they require no special effects, no CGI, no stunts, no director, no screenwriter and not much in the way of costume changes. Assembled modularly and completely interchangeable, they are like a King Lear Lego set. Their only verifiable assets are the curmudgeonly types that populate them: Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, veteran thespians who acquit themselves well no matter how dismal the material is.

Films that fall into the game-but-geriatric genre come in various formats. There is the Golden Girls version (I’ll See You in My Dreams,) the grumpy old middle-aged men version (Last Vegas), the gimpy gangsters version (Righteous Kill, Knockaround Guys), the not-for-hoi-polloi version (A Late Quartet, Youth) and the intergalactic geriatric version (Space Cowboys). There is also the senior Scandinavian sign-off saga, of which A Man Called Ove is a sterling example. With its affectionate portrayal of a crusty old bigot whose ice-cold heart is melted by the arrival of cuddly immigrant neighbours, A Man Called Ove is best thought of as Gran Swedish Torino. Or maybe just Gran Saab.

This alarming trend is not going to end any time soon. And even if Hollywood does eventually decide to stop using the emphatically elderly for target practice, it will simply lower the age at which the recently young and the previously beautiful become suitable objects of derision. First came Hot Tub Time Machine, which targeted baby boomers desperate to relive their misspent youth. Not to mention the Hangover trilogy. There is a whole bevy of films about people who view themselves as over the hill while still only in their 30s (Bad Moms). Cognisant of the industry’s ability to tailor condescending films to ever-more-segmented, ever-more-specific age groups, ethnic groups and genders, there is sure to be an old-school Asian buddy film, where ageing alumni of the Khmer Rouge get together at the bingo hall every Saturday to reminisce about the good old days when Pol Pot was running the show.

Time to check out: the cast of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Indeed, the worst thing about going to see films about hapless seniors may be having to sit through the previews for all the other films about hapless seniors. The day I went to see Going in Style, there was a singularly unamusing preview for a film about a washed-up middle-aged gigolo trying to regain his stroke, as well as a film in which a very scary-looking Goldie Hawn is abducted by terrorists, along with the glamour-free Amy Schumer. In this case, Hollywood has synthesised the dreaded girls’ night out flick (Sisters) with the equally bloodcurdling trash-talking senior chick flick (Grandma) to create something even more horrifying: the multigenerational bonding film. To which I can only say: Lord have mercy. Just this once.

There is a widespread belief that films come in cycles. Super-low-budget horror films go in and out of style, as do films about time travel or psychopathic roommates or blind nuns or morally compromised architects or hit men mourning the death of a lovable puppy. Alas, the 85-but-energised film fad seems to have plenty of life left in it. In addition to Sense of an Ending, Hampstead and The Hatton Garden Job, there is the impending William Shatner vehicle Senior Moment, as well as a new British film called Finding Your Feet, in which retiree Imelda Staunton is forced to live on a council estate. Joanna Lumley also appears in the film, presumably as punishment for starring in the dead-before-arrival Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, perhaps the worst film about rambunctious retirees ever made. Actually, there’s no “perhaps” about it. The Ab Fab movie is appalling.

An interesting subset of the geriatric genre is the superannuated art film (Sense of an Ending, Iris, 45 Years), all of which look classy and original on the surface but, at heart, have a message that is no different from all the others: What? You’re still here? An exception is the remarkable Michael Haneke film Amour, whose subject is not so much love as the determination to preserve your lover’s dignity. It is a universal human imperative – see Oedipus Rex or Ran – to try to get through your life with your dignity intact. Hollywood does everything in its power to make sure this does not happen. See Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Or Sunset Boulevard. Or take a look at Kirk Douglas’s last few films.

No discussion of what the Italians might refer to as la cinevecchia or il cinemantico would be complete without mentioning Remember. This is the bizarre 2015 Atom Egoyan film about a dementia-plagued Holocaust survivor who escapes from a nursing home and then goes gunning for the concentration camp guard who tormented him as a youth. The cruel joke – on the audience, as well as on the addled avenger – is that he himself is the Nazi guard he has been hunting. The addled Aryan doesn’t realise this until the very end of the film because, well, he’s got Alzheimer’s, and when you have got Alzheimer’s, you tend to forget little things such as your role in the Holocaust.

I think movie-makers need to let this genre go.