Shame on you Disney. Shame on you John Travolta. Shame on you Robin Williams. And, most important, curse you Wild Hogs for setting some evil precedent that horribly written, directed, and edited films about old men rediscovering their youth are box office draws. They're not. They're huge mistakes with no shred of redeeming value. It was true of Wild Hogs, it holds true with Old Dogs. Disney used Travolta to humorous effect with both their Hairspray remake and their animated feature Bolt, but now they've gone and ruined him. And Robin Williams, oh Robin Williams. For the last decade we've endured crappy comedy after crappy comedy with you finally making something decent again in 2009 (World's Greatest Dad), only to have you confirm that that was a fluke. Well, you let us dream. Old Dogs is the least surprising disappointment of 2009. Everyone knew it would be awful going in, and it didn't let us down. Well done Disney, sort of.
Charlie (Travolta) and Dan (Williams) make a complete person as business partners. Charlie wheels and deals, charming the pants off of business clients, while his better half Dan finishes the deal with the nitty-gritty details and PowerPoint presentations. They've become the biggest names in sports marketing and have just made huge inroads with a Japanese client. The deal is in the final stages and their young apprentice (Seth Green) is prepping for the trip to Japan where he'll live an act as their liaison. It all seems to be on track, they just have to wine and dine the head honcho of the company and they're in. What could go wrong?
The writers are glad you asked. You shouldn't have though. You shouldn't encourage them like that.
A few years back, Dan went through a painful divorce. He was depressed, so Charlie took him on a trip to get his mojo back. He got a tattoo, he met Vicki (Kelly Preston)...and they got hitched – all in one crazy night. The next day, the marriage was annulled. He never saw the woman again and they both returned to their lives. 7 years later the latest ex-wife jumps back into his life. She's heading to a two-week prison sentence for environmental activism and needs somewhere to ditch her kids. Her kids – and Dan's kids. Turns out he's a dad and never knew it. So he volunteers to take them for two weeks and finds his life complicated in new ways. With each blunder in the business deal, the writers decided to use that age-old trick where the foreign emissary interprets the protagonist's mistake as a sign of some admirable quality.
While the two men fight for their business, they also fight for the love and affection of the two children. They make mistakes – the children feel unloved. They take extra steps to care for them – the children feel loved. It's such an easy script to write and an easy film to make. It requires nothing creative of the actors. There's nothing here. The film is a vacuum devoid of anything funny or remotely compelling in terms of story. They started with the “yuk yuk” premise of old men caring for energetic children and never bothered to think any harder. What if the kids mix up their pills (because all 55-year-olds take excessive numbers of pills)? What if the old dogs play tea party and dress up? This whole area is ripe for parody. If it really was, it still is, because Old Dogs failed to harvest any of the laughs.
The jokes aren't funny, the performances are subpar, and the editing is atrocious. Even if there was some semblance of comedic timing to this whole mess, the editing to cut from one scene to another is so atrociously bad that it's embarrassing that it came from the house of mouse.
High definition can't really save this train wreck nor does it even help. It looks nice, but if the laughs aren't coming no one's going to forgive a comedy just because you can see the varicose veins in Robin Williams's arms.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The combo pack comes with a Blu-ray, DVD, and digital copy, with exclusive extras that don't do anything to redeem the feature. A music video from Bryan Adams and a look at the child actors don't do much to make it better. Otherwise the offerings include some deleted scenes, another music video (this time from John and Ella Bleu Travolta), and an audio commentary with the god awful writers and the ill-skilled director Walt Becker.
"Old Dogs" is on sale March 9, 2010 and is rated PG. Comedy. Directed by Walt Becker. Written by David Diamond, David Weissman. Starring John Travolta, Justin Long, Matt Dillon, Robin Williams, Seth Green, Kelly Preston.
