In the spirit of films like “Wild Hogs,” the holiday season is kicking off all wrong. In Disney’s “Old Dogs,” John Travolta and Robin Williams deliver a comedy friendly to all ages with a message of familial loyalties wrapped in an insidious characterization of the American male.
“Old Dogs” follows Dan (Robin Williams, “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian”) and Charlie (John Travolta, “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3”) as two sports marketing executives who suddenly must care for Dan’s two illegitimate children. Neutral and inoffensive comedy ensues and, with Disney’s help, a Thanksgiving movie night tradition for tired grandparents and bored children is upheld.
While the major plot points of “Old Dogs” present an innocuous and quasi-uplifting tale of fatherly love and the tribulations of parenthood, the characters portrayed by Williams and Travolta are awful role models. The duo fulfills the same roles as the lead characters in CBS’s “Two and a Half Men:” Williams is the spineless, semi-intellectual and organizationally inclined, while Travolta is the womanizing narcissist and charismatic impulsive guy who always wins with the ladies. Watching the two play off each other provides marginal and forced humor (usually when Travolta tries and miserably fails at being cool), but mostly the two trade lines about aging and being pathetic examples of graceless maturation. For example, the film opens with Travolta recounting the story (involving a divorce and a debauchery-fueled trip to Miami) of why his partner has the word “Fremont” tattooed across his chest.
The roles simply do not fit the actors. Williams’ ability and presence would best be served as an immature funny man, and Travolta’s role would have meshed well as an overprotective and bully-headed older brother type. The story would still be rife with possibility for the overarching theme of redemption through fatherhood, but writers David Diamond (“Evolution”) and David Weissman (“Evolution”) swing and miss with the combination they have formulated.
Seth Green (“Family Guy”) fills out the cast as a sycophantic subordinate itching for the chance to achieve. Again, nothing of any substance is conveyed through Green’s character, although watching him act like a little bitch and get hit in the groin is more satisfying than much of anything else in the 88-minute film.
Beyond the terrifying depiction of aging prevalent in “Old Dogs,” there seems to be an utter lack of congenial chemistry between Williams and Travolta. When Charlie embraces Dan, their heads are pushed together like brothers, but their hips are out as if they are on an awkward first date. Homoeroticism is not left out either, with an extended miscommunication leaving the duo perceived as an old gay married couple. This may produce laughs for some, but may leave a bad taste in the mouths of others.
The time devoted to developing the characters of the children are chopped down to two short scenes. Here is where the movie might be able to delve slightly deeper than melodrama, but instead of depicting the children’s need for a competent father figure (and adding a shred of substantive emotional weight), they seem to only serve the purpose of premise and plot device. The kids in this film exist only to complicate matters for their two dads, and do so without any real connection between each other, their fathers or the audience — the whole affair becomes systematic and forced. In the only scene with Dan and his daughter, Williams is (literally) forced to sing and dance via a robotic puppetry suit. Here is where Williams’ performance could have shined, but the type of slapstick the audience might be wishing for goes as quickly as it comes.
The story really isn’t about the kids, though, which is unfortunate for all of the likely 12-and-unders that will be forced by older relatives to attend a screening of this lukewarm comedy. The focus of “Old Dogs” is on the difficulties of aging appropriately, balancing a career and starting a family in a time acceptably subversive to the nuclear family. All of these subjects could be perfectly conveyed in a film like “Old Dogs,” but these themes are only superficially explored. The premise flounders and is used as vehicle for jokes about pill-popping geriatrics and their respective failures in developing meaningful lives.
1 star out of 5.
