Old Dads Review

Slowly but surely, Bill Burr is cementing himself in the right Hollywood sphere. Though his stage presence and general attitude would deem him at odds with the whole debacle, the likes of Old Dads and The King of Staten Island are doing well to polish his star. We were there for The Front Runner, when this ginger snowball started rolling, and we are here for the smash it causes when hitting the side of a mountain, ruining the momentum yet still defended by those in line with the man who makes them laugh. Bobby Cannavale features in this, as does Bokeem Woodbine, two men whose careers are neither flagging nor soaring, they just continue to move around, picking up the odd parts here with no sense of direction lying under it.  

Content they may be to give in to this decade’s Grown Ups spectacle, audience members should not be as convinced by it. Cheap family tact is boiled down here, with 55-year-old Burr portraying 46-year-old Jack Kelly. He makes a note of the age, why not here too? This is a feature of fatherhood and the adjacent fears, directed and starring Burr, who makes a go of it – it being just about everything. His spot-check and talent as a stand-up comedian are absent here, the narration is relatively poor as he channels a Joe Rogan-oriented archetype, smoking cigars and mocking vegans. Cheap shots out of the blue, the run of scenes here are TikTok fodder at their finest. Clippable moments to play above a GTA V car rushing down a ramp.  

Consider the other comedians of today, hard at work as they try and fashion out the final third of their careers. Some are more successful than others, particularly Ray Romano, whose Somewhere in Queens gets the right slice of life and worried change of pace in the world around him right. Burr however just punches down and around, swinging and connecting with everything and anything. Some of it is funny, lingering on with tired routines found in his work over the last decade. Some of it considers the taboo around swearing while other pieces hit back against the nosy parents who do not know better. All of it feels miserably lifted from 2014 when it was already a tired-enough piece rattled around by British sketch shows and numerous comedies. Nothing changes when your head is in the clouds.  

Cleaning a wound or not playing ball are depicted as the actions of a wuss rather than someone wanting to keep sepsis away or find better pastimes than baseball-adjacent troubles. Vaguely dull and a bit of an old-hat experience at times, with the Old Dads mentality certainly lingering on the first word of its straightforward title. Little laughs, lighter on energy and devoid of any form of chemistry between Burr, Cannavale and Woodbine, this dreadful lack of plot and aim is consistent and tiresome. It feels like it tries to cut at the world around these three but has an aimlessness to it which strikes as shocking given the veteran status of Burr at this point. Caricature punchlines and the interactions between this Burr-led trio and Richie (Bruce Dern) toward the end of the film are meant to be the inspirational snapping of a nerve nestled in the brain, when it is just Burr and friends moping around on modern technology, confused by scooters as these old dads ride toward the jaded, dated sunset.