You can’t teach old dogs new tricks, so what do you do instead? Simple: have them do their old tricks – but put a carousel and marching band around them, so nobody notices. The carousel and marching band in question is called Old Dogs, in which Robin Williams and John Travolta do their time-honoured thing which they’ve done since the late 70s; they’re as comfortable as a pair of old socks, and about as charming. Robin is neurotic, fast-talking, angst-ridden. John is languid, suave, a bit of a lad, though his brashness has been smoothed by middle-age: where Tony Manero, Danny Zuko and Vincent Vega – his three most famous characters – radiated danger, he now radiates bonhomie, a businessman’s glad-handing, back-slapping and anecdote-telling.
Robin and John are indeed business partners – they’re a team: Robin makes the presentations, John warms up the audience with his funny stories – landed with a couple of 6-year-old twins while in the middle of a huge business deal. The kids are Robin’s, from a (very) short-lived marriage – one drunken night, basically – but their mum’s out of action for two weeks so Robin, who didn’t even know he had kids, has to look after them, and of course John has to help. Cue hilarity.
This is Three Men and a Baby territory – but the thing about Old Dogs is that it never quite believes its unlikely premise. Oh, it tries to contrive it so it seems halfway-plausible (so, for instance, the ex-wife has Robin promise “No babysitters!”, lest we ask ‘Why didn’t they just hire a sitter?’), and of course there’s a sentimental bit with sickly music where Robin tells the kids how much he loves them – but the kids never emerge as characters, nor do they feature in the plot that much. They’re a peg on which to hang John and Robin doing their schtick, and the job of director Walt Becker (who also made Wild Hogs with Travolta) is to make the film as manic as possible, lest that schtick appear stale. Like I said: carousel and marching band.
Old Dogs is broad (and sometimes tasteless), stretching its jokes in outlandish ways. It’s not domestic sitcom, as the plot might suggest; it’s out-and-out farce. John and Robin have to sneak into a zoo, fending off amorous gorillas and angry penguins. They take the wrong pills, and suffer all sorts of slapstick side-effects: John gets ravenously hungry and also can’t stop smiling – both of which are deeply inappropriate when he attends a cancer support group – while Robin loses depth-perception and leans into people’s faces while saying hello. They get serenaded by singing waiters, get mistaken for a gay couple, go on a camping trip and burn the camp down. Robin stays too long in a tanning salon and comes out looking like an Indian (we know this because real Indians come up to him and speak in Hindi, looking baffled when he says he’s from Hoboken). Robin wears a special body-suit and transforms into a kind of hi-tech puppet, which John manipulates by remote-control. People assume they’re the kids’ grandparents, and shake their heads sympathetically – thinking he’s incontinent – when John spills a glass of water all over his trousers.
That last gag is perhaps the most significant – because Old Dogs is a frightened film beneath the bells and whistles, terrified of old age and death (there actually is an old dog, who duly kicks the bucket as an Intimation of Mortality). In a way, the film is hard to watch, because it’s been on the shelf for a while and a lot of things have happened since it was made: Travolta’s lost a son, Williams had open-heart surgery and Bernie Mac (who appears in a small role) has passed on. It makes the over-caffeinated tone even stranger, like the stars are trying to keep Death at bay by sheer manic energy.
Old Dogs is no-one’s idea of a good film: its plot is perfunctory, its jokes are foolish, its level of wit may be gauged by the scene where Robin tries to explain where babies come from to a kid while the kid is sitting on the toilet (complete with little fart sounds on the soundtrack). But it’s kind of like watching an old dog coming down the street, wagging its tail and barking cheerfully even as it drags its gamey leg behind it, bumps into trees and can’t even walk straight. It’s sad and pathetic, but you can’t take your eyes off the poor old thing.
