[For Christmas with Walt Disney click here or scroll down.]
The title Old Dogs refers to the fact that Charlie (John Travolta) and Don (Robin Williams)—life-long friends and partners in a successful boutique sports marketing firms—must learn some new tricks when Don suddenly finds himself responsible for a pair of 7-year-old twins he never knew he had. To me, though, when you remove the phrase “old dog” from the idiom, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” it also has a feeling of relaxed comfort; of a long companion who fits in the groove of your life without any irritation or hassle; of contentment, and of overlooking quirks that might reasonably annoy. At this point in their careers, John Travolta and Robin Williams are just pleasant to see on screen. They’re comfortable, their quirks are well known, and they don’t extend themselves trying to break new ground, putting stress on our relationship with them. In this sense, Old Dogs is a movie that works—kind of.
Everything in Old Dogs is broad and implausible. Eight years ago, Charlie swept Dan off to a quick getaway in Miami’s South Beach to help Dan battle his post-divorce depression. There, Dan meets Vicki (Kelly Preston) in a night of drunken debauchery that leads to a quickie wedding—and an annulment soon thereafter. Skip ahead to present day: Charlie and Dan’s firm is in the middle of the putting together the biggest marketing deal of their careers when Vicki shows up again. Turns out she’s about to go to jail for a couple weeks due to some environmental protest trespassing and vandalism, and this seemed a good time to finally tell Dan about their twins, Zach (Conner Rayburn) and Emily (Ella Bleu Travolta).
© Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Some judiciously timed slapstick takes out the intended babysitter (played by Rita Wilson, wife of actor Tom Hanks) and suddenly Dan’s taking care of them.
Considering it’s a movie about learning to be a father, the children are surprisingly scarce throughout the movie, just popping up every once in a while to move things from one set piece to the next pratfall. The focus, instead, remains squarely on Travolta and Williams. The constant jokes about them either being grandparents (which isn’t unreasonable for two men with their AARP cards) or a gay couple quickly lose what little charm they had. To the extent the movie succeeds comedically, it is during the slapstick that is liberally larded throughout the movie. It may make absolutely no sense (and be completely irrelevant to the plot) that Charlie ends up at a bereavement group potluck having accidentally taken Dan’s daily pills—each with a comedic side effect—but the results are actually somewhat funny. And really, is there anything more certain to get a belly laugh than the intersection of a golf ball and testicles? How about doing it twice?
© Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Seth Green is also in the movie although is generally wasted, since at no point is it made clear why he is in the movie. The unexpected appearance of Bernie Mac as a puppeteer who’ll help Dan learn to loosen up with children serves as a mid-movie reminder of the film’s difficulty getting into theaters. Mac’s untimely death near its original release date caused a postponement, only to be postponed further following the even more untimely death of Travolta’s son, Jett, earlier this year—and then a major health scare for Robin Williams requiring heart surgery. After such a horrible year for so many involved, the urge is to root the movie on, but unfortunately it just doesn’t meet you halfway.
There are laughs, and it is a good clean family movie safe for a post-Thanksgiving dinner group outing to the theater (a couple poop jokes is about as raunchy as it gets) though that might turn into nap time.
Old Dogs is a Walt Disney Pictures release.
- Wide release on Wednesday, November 25.
- Directed by Walt Becker
- Screenplay by David Diamond and David Weissman
- Starring Robin Williams, John Travolta, Kelly Preston, Seth Green, Conner Rayburn, Ella Bleu Travolta
- Rated PG for mild rude humor.
- Running time 88 minutes
- Alex’s Rating: 4 out of 10
Christmas with Walt Disney
Meanwhile, for those of you in the San Francisco area or who will be visiting during the holiday season, the Walt Disney Family Museum will be showing a new film that may be of interest. Christmas with Walt Disney is a survey of the Christmas holiday through the lens of Walt Disney the man and Walt Disney the company.
The hour-long film is narrated by Diane Disney Miller, daughter of Walt Disney, and breaks down into roughly three parts. First is Disney home video from Christmases throughout Disney Miller’s childhood. Since Walt is often the cameraman, he’s not generally in these clips but two home movies show him candidly and he and Lillian Disney learn to ice skate and ski at Bear Mountain. Clips from classic shorts echoing these personal scenes are sprinkled throughout to good effect.
The second segment looks at how scenes of Christmas were used in the Walt Disney Company animated shorts, movies, and TV specials through the years. Extended segments are shown from the short Pluto’s Christmas Tree, Three Caballeros, Swiss Family Robinson, Those Calloways, as well as a performance from the Firehouse Five Plus 2 from a 1950 Christmas TV special (which Wade Sampson wrote about last year).
Finally, the third segment looks at how Christmas was celebrated at Disneyland through its early years, and how much it meant to Walt to do so. The focus is on the annual Christmas parade, and even though fleeting, it is great to see a clip from an early Candlelight Processional and see how relatively unchanged that park tradition has been over 50 years. Though it makes sense, it’s sure to induce some twinge of jealousy when Disney Miller mentions getting to watch the Christmas parade every year from the window of Walt’s apartment over the Main Street firehouse.
Christmas with Walt Disney is not a movie that is going to be of broad general interest. None of the classic items from the Disney library are shown in their entirety, but rather serve to emphasize points. So if you aren’t interested in the personal history of Disney, you probably won’t want to make a trip out to the Presidio just to see it. But if you are so interested, it would be a good addition to a visit at the museum or just a day of sightseeing in that part of San Francisco.
Christmas with Walt Disney is showing exclusively at the Walt Disney Family Museum from November 27 through January 4, 2010. Tickets—$10 for adults, $6 or $8 for children depending on age—can be purchased in advance (link) or on site, and are a separate entry from the museum itself (link). It is screened every 90 minutes during museum hours (10am-6pm daily, closed Tuesdays). The museum is located at 104 Montgomery Street (in The Presidio) in San Francisco.
