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Is there anyone really stupid enough to think you'd need to hire a child-proofing company to put locks on kitchen cabinets for 7-year-olds?
It's the kind of idiocy we endure in "Old Dogs," a mutt of a Disney comedy starring John Travolta and Robin Williams as best friends who have built a sports marketing empire despite having the common sense of Mr. Kotter's sweathogs.
- Starring: IRobin Williams, John Travolta.
- Rating: PG for some mild rude humor.
- Web site: http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/olddogs/
The last time we saw Williams trying to close a big business deal, he was driving an RV off a cliff. This time he's fighting a gorilla and flying around on a jetpack that crashes much like the promising beginning.
Travolta (Charlie) and Williams (Dan) are lifelong BFFs, even though the big guy is a swaggering playboy and Dan is more of an uptight klutz who's awkward with peers and utterly hopeless with kids. When we first meet them, Dan is managing to be divorced twice in a 24-hour span after Charlie drags him into a lost weekend in South Beach.
Eight years later, as they're trying to win a bid with a powerful and conservative Japanese firm, Dan's one-night stand (Kelly Preston) arrives in New York with their fraternal twins. Why she waits seven years to inform him that he has children goes along with the rest of the logic in "Old Dogs."
Out of nowhere, she needs Dan to watch the kids for two weeks, which to him is like watching a pair of aliens. He even lives in some weird adults-only condo, so they all need to hole up at Charlie's sleek bachelor pad. Thus the need for locks and gates on everything.
As Charlie and Dan overdo it trying to entertain the twins, "Old Dogs" tries too hard to entertain its audience with one bit of slapstick after another, starting with a disastrous Boy Scout getaway complete with a bloody Ultimate Frisbee game you'd swear Tarantino directed.
Next up, Dan is off to a golf game with the Japanese and Charlie is attending a bereavement group luncheon, both whacked out on various prescription drugs that the kids accidentally swapped. The child-proofers, apparently, should have started with the medicine cabinet, but they're also stupid, and the absurdity that follows is one of the funnier parts of "Old Dogs," even if you kick yourself for laughing.
It all gets ridiculous enough that Charlie hires a puppeteer (the late Bernie Mac in his last film) with robotic technology to try to get a grip on Dan's woeful parenting. Basically, it was a way to get a little more slapstick out of Williams by squeezing him into a robot contraption.
In between misadventures, director Walt Becker ("Wild Hogs," "Van Wilder") makes a few meager attempts to throw in the heartwarming father-twin scenes that will set us up for the predictable Disney ending.
It's not unusual for broad comedies to have one or two or five contrivances that force you to go with the flow. In "Old Dogs," you would quickly lose count. The trailer, for instance, shows that scene of Dan, Charlie and their boyish assistant Craig (Seth Green) breaking into the zoo. Why did they have to break into the zoo? Because three savvy marketing pros couldn't convince the security guard at the gate that Dan was late for his twins' birthday party.
OK, it ended up being good for a few laughs at Green's expense, but the creators of "Old Dogs" could have tried harder than that. And old pros Travolta and Williams should have known better than to bark up this tree.
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