Old Dogs

There are plenty of bad comedies released every year, but very few that can be labeled inexplicably bad. The last movie to earn this title was All About Steve. Old Dogs thankfully does not quite reach the same levels that one did, but it's still inexplicably bad in its own misguided way. How anyone at the studio thought this movie was fit to be released in its current form is beyond me. Not only does the screenplay by David Diamond and David Weissman (Evolution) hold not one single honest moment or genuine laugh, but the movie's been hacked to pieces in a futile attempt to salvage it.

Old Dogs was originally set to be released in the Spring, but has been shuffled through various release dates until finally hitting theaters for Thanksgiving - Appropriate given how large of a turkey the movie is. During that time, it was edited beyond recognition, so that in the final product, scenes start and stop at random, characters and plot points are introduced and forgotten about at the drop of a hat, and the entire movie feels disjointed, almost like you're watching a 90 minute trailer. Consider this - In the movie, Robin Williams plays a guy struggling with raising two kids he never knew he had. At one point, he blows up, telling his best friend (John Travolta) that he wishes he never had kids. His son (Conner Rayburn) hears this, and storms off, slamming the door to his room shut, as Williams looks hurt. How does he make it up to the boy? He doesn't. There is no follow-through to this scene, and no reconciliation between the two. Next time we see the kid, he's perfectly fine around Williams. In fact, the scene that comes after the kid storms off concerns Williams trying to win over his daughter by having a tea party with her, while dressed up in an embarrassing King outfit that makes Williams look kind of like King Friday from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Did I mention that this scene also contains Williams wearing an electronic suit that allows Travolta to control him with a joystick from another room? I'll leave you to figure out how that plays in by yourself.

The entire movie is like this - Just one scene after another with little to no lead-in. Williams and Travolta take the kids on a sudden camping outing, where they are antagonized by a macho scout troop leader (Matt Dillon), and a wild-eyed psychopath (Justin Long), who I think is the dad of one of the kids in the group. Where did these characters come from, and what do they have to do with anything? Heck if this movie knows. They're forgotten about a few scenes later, and never mentioned again. Travolta also has a budding relationship with a girl at work who serves as a Japanese interpreter (Lori Loughlin from TV's Full House) that never goes anywhere. It seems like her part was supposed to be bigger, but most of her scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. As it stands, she comes and goes from the story at will, the movie forgetting she exists for long periods of time. The one supporting character who seems consistent in the movie is the dog that Travolta's character owns. He's one of those "intelligent" dogs you sometimes see in movies, who somehow understands what people are saying, and is able to give "cute" reaction shots whenever someone says or does something funny. If there's a more desperate sign of a desperate comedy than a reaction shot dog, I haven't found it.

I realize I haven't spoken a word about the plot. That's only because it doesn't matter. It's merely a set up for these random scenes I've been talking about. Williams and Travolta are business partners who are about to make a big company deal with a powerful Japanese corporation, when a woman from Williams' past comes back. She's played by Travolta's real-life wife, Kelly Preston, and she dumps two twin kids (played by Rayburn, and Travolta's real-life daughter, Ella Bleu) on him. He's apparently their biological father after they spent a drunken and passionate night together once seven years ago, and now she has to go to prison for two weeks after she pulled a protest stunt. The cast handles this material energetically at least, but the movie does them absolutely no favors. It doesn't allow them to create genuine characters, it just drags them from one slapstick sequence to the next. They go camping, they go to baseball games, they experience the side effects of pills, they break into a zoo and get attacked by gorillas and penguins, they fly on jetpacks, and then the movie's over. I liked the last part the best.

It's bad enough that Old Dogs just is not funny, but it's also sappy and mawkishly sentimental. The music score by John Debney hits you over the head with music that's supposed to be whimsical and heartwarming, but ends up being overpowering. The movie tries to find a human tone, as both Williams and Travolta warm up to having the kids in their lives and realize there's more to life than business deals, but there's a big miscalculation here - The characters never seem human to begin with. The adults act like idiots, the kids act like zany sitcom stars, and for some reason, the movie feels like we don't get the joke, so it has to keep on spelling it out for us. Just in case we don't laugh at Robin Williams mistaking bear droppings for face paint, it will remind us in dialogue once or twice that he just did. Either that, or it will cut to a reaction shot of the dog, who will raise an eye with a confused whimper noise on the soundtrack. It's never a good sign when a comedy feels the need to draw attention to its own jokes. I haven't seen a comedy this insecure in its own audience since The Love Guru.

To say that everyone should have known better would be an understatement. Did Williams really need another paycheck? Did Travolta really need to drag most of his family into this? Did director Walt Becker (Wild Hogs) see anything worthwhile in this script? For that matter, did the studio? You could go on for days asking "what were they thinking?", and never get an answer. The only definite conclusion to be found is that Old Dogs is garbage.

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