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Trailer: Old Dogs

Sitting through Old Dogs was more painful than a colonoscopy. It's a sad state of affairs when a "comedy" starring Robin Williams can only generate a chuckle or two. And why is Williams even in this trash? Is he really hurting for money? I'll save you some time and cash and give away the ending - they all live happily ever after. Big surprise.

Dan (Williams) and Charlie (John Travolta) have been best friends for 30 years. They run a successful sports marketing firm in New York City together. While Charlie is an eternal bachelor, Dan has been married and divorced twice. The second time around, Dan married Vicki (Kelly Preston) during a drunken trip to Miami that Charlie took him on to get over his first divorce. The marriage only lasted 24 hours and he hasn't seen her for the past seven years. That is until she contacts him with news that he's a father to 7-year-old twins. One thing leads to another and he has to take care of said kids for a couple of weeks while Vicki does a stint in prison.

What comes next is a bunch of stupid scenes that rely heavily on making fun of gays, grieving people, kids, and senior citizens, and uses dumb animal humour in order to get a laugh. It fails miserably on all attempts. Williams and Travolta have no chemistry and their friendship feels so forced and unreal on screen that one can only assume the two hate each other off camera. Preston comes across as an idiot and poor Bernie Mac will forever be remembered for this as it's his last role before passing away last year.

Matt Dillon, Justin Long, Rita Wilson, Ann-Margret, and Amy Sedaris all appear at some point but disappear so fast you wonder what their purpose is. The one saving grace that keeps Old Dogs from being the worst film of the year is Seth Green. He plays Craig, a young employee who works for Dan and Charlie, and the star below is for him and him only. Although he doesn't have much to work with, he makes his character come to life with humour, something that Williams should be able to do and Travolta never could.

Director Walt Becker seems to only know how to make a piece of celluloid crap. He might actually be a bigger hack behind the lens than the infamous Uwe Boll. Becker's previous, lamely-titled movie Wild Hogs, which stars Travolta in another unfunny role, tortured audiences and critics in 2007. Before that, he made the barely watchable frat-boy flick Van Wilder. Sadly, he has many films in the works including a sequel to Hogs. Someone better start a petition to stop this man.

I have no clue who Old Dogs was made for. The theatre I was in was fairly quiet during the hour-and-a-half runtime, which felt more like four hours. This is a case where a focus group should have been brought in to test the film before Disney unleashed it on the masses.

* out of 5 stars