Old Dogs
Old Dogs is the name of the recently movie by Robin Williams and John Travolta. I admit that I may have gotten a bit sucked in on the hype with this one and I definitely saw it completely by chance at the time, as Thanksgiving evening late I was just bored and I did not want to wait the extra forty minutes for anything else. I have heard a few people having good things to say about it, but my general feeling is at best a sophomore effort, which is just way sub-par for veteran talent like Williams and Travolta.
Premise of the movie has Williams playing a very straight laced account executive to his best friend, played by Travolta, who lives life much more on the edge and much more apt to do risky things. They are in a sports marketing business together and have been for years. Travolta has never been married, but Williams was for a while. At the end of that marriage seven or eight years prior, Travolta gets William’s character to lighten up by going to Florida for a unplanned adventure. During a drinking binge, Williams gets a tattoo of Freedom on his chest (turns out Fremont) and ends up married to a stranger, followed by a sobering retreat.
During a huge business deal negotiation the 2nd ex shows back up and while the aunt is initially going to watch the paternal twins that we learn are Williams kids, a freak accident with a car trunk leaves her incapable. And so Williams draws the duty as the Mom has to serve a couple of weeks in prison for radical protest gone extreme. Williams can not relate to the kids and so enlists Travolta to assist, reminding him it is all his fault anyway.
Bottom line is the comedy was stale and very predictable at best. I think the premise of having Williams play the supposedly straight man to begin with was a major flaw and probably limited the flexibility of just letting loose with some of his better work as he has done in the past. A lot of the almost funny moments seemed to have been way to contrived and forced to really be funny.
In truth, I do find one thing very hilarious about the whole endeavor. Naming the film Old Dogs was about the funniest thing of the movie. While always having been a Robin Williams fan, in this feature both he and Travolta truly do feel like old dogs that have been there and done that and really need to give some deeper thoughts to the next efforts they put forth. Usually I am a lot more careful about selection and hence rarely have really bad things to say, but this one is I say wait fro the DVD and a a drinking evening, maybe it will pass as funny then, otherwise I would skip this mediocre effort totally.
** – image from movie publicity materials…
