2023's Old Dads is a real car accident of a movie, a sometimes mischance you can't look away from. I mean you could call it comedy (that's its M.O.) but there's also some embittered, dramatic scarring to deal with. The runtime is 104 minutes, the humor is as dry as sandpaper, and the setting is suburbia LA. "Change happens faster than when you were young". Oh fo sho.
Directed by veteran funnyman Bill Burr and released by Netflix in October of last year, Old Dads is about what it says it is, a raw character study of three best buds who become fathers later in life than expected. Burr (he plays Jack Kelly) is the Greek chorus dad, the anchor of all things middle aging. He's loose-lipped and angry and perturbed, possibly on the verge of self-reproach. The other dads that hang with him (Bobby Cannavale as Connor Brody, Bokeem Woodbine as Mike Richards) are quite the hoot as well, man-children with zero filter and testy dispositions in tote. "But I'd do anything for my kid". Again fo sho.
Old Dads, well it paints the three daddy-o-s as coarse goofs while their attractive wives kind of lounge in the background, getting their SMH's on. The film, yeah it's basically a series of intense confrontations between husbands and wives and girlfriends and just about anybody with two legs and a heartbeat. Burr is obviously in his element here, sort of playing himself as helmer and trouper while fashioning a one up, acting showcase for tidy effect. His direction is adequate if not disjointed, but what counts is how plain-spoken and blunt his Old Dads is. I mean just imagine a PTA meeting where everyone is inebriated and ready to go after the ill-protected. This thin-skinned critic found the whole ordeal rather fascinating. Not so same "old" same "old".
Written by Jesse Burleson
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