Old Dogs

Released: 2009
MPAA rating: PG
Running time: 1:28

Here is a yin/yang moment in life:  Finally get Blu-ray and HD and the first movie we pop in and watch?  Yup, it’s “Old Dogs”.  The good news is it looked amazing!  The bad news is it may be one of the worst comedy scripts I’ve seen in a long time.  Even Seth Green, who I generally like in every thing he does, just could not save this movie.  The basic concept is that Dan (Robin Williams) learns he has two kids with one of his ex-girlfriends (Kelly Preston) and he will need to take care of them while their mom handles some personal business.  Dan recruits his life-long friend and business partner, Charlie (John Travolta), to help him deal with this situation.  The humor is supposed to come from these aging men suddenly faced with responsibilities of parenting, a concept much better explored in “Three Men and a Baby”.  Travolta and Preston’s daughter makes her film debut as the daughter and Travolta cites this as the reason he signed on to the project.  As acting goes, Travolta goes from very good to very bad and this movie is the latter.  You also would expect funnier from Robin Williams, but there is not much good comedy to pull out of this script.   Right off the top, I knew it was trouble when the first big sight gag was a tanning booth mishap that was lifted almost exactly from the TV show “Friends”.  This was book-ended by a final gag pretty much stolen from “Jingle All the Way”.  Comedy doesn’t have to be cutting edge or adult, but this movie’s humor is so watered down, it ends up being childish. 

Grade: D