Old Dogs has had a difficult journey to the multiplexes. The untimely death of Bernie Mac, coupled with high profile personal troubles for both John Travolta and Robin Williams meant a release delay of just over a year.
The real tragedy is that this dog of a movie was greenlit in the first place. If you walk out of Old Dogs you should be unabashedly ashamed of yourself, because you should never have walked in to begin with.
Two successful business partners and childhood friends—ageing playboy Charlie (Travolta) and neurotic divorcee Dan (Williams) – find their lives turned upside down when a former drunken liaison (Kelly Preston) turns up to inform Dan that he is the father to her seven-year-old twins.
With her impending incarceration for being a political activist (really!), Dan and Charlie must juggle the business deal of a lifetime with the responsibilities of parenting two stereotypical Hollywood brats, and subsequent hilarity will no doubt ensue. It’s here that the tumbleweed should blow across the page.
Not many people are given a second chance. Travolta was rescued from the nadir of Look Who’s Talking Now and delivered the performance of his life in Pulp Fiction. Robin Williams was similarly scraped from the pavement to Oscar winning glory in Good Will Hunting. Well, now they have decided to join forces to ring in the end of their credibility as bankable performers.
The artist formerly known as Mork is given the weightier role (and that’s saying something given Travolta’s paunch) as the reluctant patriarch. His gurning is instantly irritating and Dan embodies all the frustrating traits that come with a Williams man/child performance.
But he is restrained in comparison to Travolta. Hyperactive, twitchy and truly awful, you’d be hard pushed to find a more terrible turn this year, and the fact that he was beaten to Worst Actor at the 2010 Razzie Awards (for which this received four nominations) is a crime.
Would anybody enjoy this? If your idea of a good time includes urinating dogs, farting children, an incontinent John Travolta, and borderline racist spray tan jokes that have been lifted from episodes of Friends, then you can book your ticket now. Although I wouldn’t bother, you could probably walk into screen number nine and brush away the cobwebs on the way to your seat.
Struggling to find anything positive to say about this (it’s important to provide balance in this job) leads to the recollection of a rather enjoyable Justin Long cameo, and the nagging feeling that Bernie Mac deserved better for his cinematic epitaph.
[etRating value=“ 1”]
