Old Dads Parent Guide

At an age when most adults see retirement in the not-too-distant future, Jack, Connor, and Mike (played by Bill Burr, Bobby Cannavale, and Bokeem Woodbine) are in the trenches of early parenthood. Jack and his wife have a preschooler, with a baby on the way. Connor and his wife also have a preschooler, and Mike has just learned that his young girlfriend is unexpectedly pregnant. Having kids in your late forties and early fifties is challenging enough, but these lifelong friends have other issues to manage.

The three men have just sold their company which is now being run by a 28-year-old with lofty ambitions about going viral and little loyalty to the core business. In addition to finding their footing in this new office environment, Jack tries to make peace with the hyper-progressive preschool principal he offended, Connor submits himself to his controlling wife’s rules, and Mike grapples with his reluctance about being a dad for the second time around. After things blow up at the office, the men learn that “locker room talk” has consequences (even when it takes place in a rental car). Eventually, they wind up in a strip club in the desert, trying to figure out what really matters to them.

When a major studio like Miramax skips theaters and releases a movie directly to Netflix, that sends up a red flag, which should be heeded. Old Dads is supposed to be a comedy but it’s not funny. The jokes are often offensive, the characters are flat and unappealing, and the writing consists mainly of sexual expletives strung together with exposition, insults, and rage.

This script might not tell much of a story, but it clumsily attempts to depict a subset of men consumed with anger over what they see as their loss of respect in 21^st century culture. The entire tale is a screaming indictment against “wokeness” at its most absurd. Jack is constantly irate or critical over everything – judgmental parenting attitudes, transgender people, and the über-progressive preschool school his son attends. If you’re also enraged by this kind of stereotyped faux liberalism, Bill Burr will be a kindred spirit, but I don’t see mass appeal in a movie that recycles tired culture war skirmishes for the big screen. Frankly, I’m just as annoyed by films that portray liberals as virtue-signaling thought police as I am by productions that depict conservatives as racist, women-hating fundamentalists. Neither are amusing and both sabotage our ability to understand one another and build a cohesive, functioning society.

This film narrows its potential audience further with a mind-boggling amount of negative content. Spouting an average of two-and-a-half swear words per minute, this script isn’t family-friendly, and all the drinking, cocaine use, and cigar smoking doesn’t help. The three buddies get drunk, gamble, and go to a strip club where they watch strippers and have lap dances with women whose scanty costumes leave breasts and buttocks exposed. Repeated mentions of oral sex, masturbation, and porn don’t improve the movie’s tone.

Depressingly, there’s not much in this movie that’s worth watching. Yes, Jack decides that he loves his kids enough to work on his temper and Mike steps up for his coming child. Connor even makes a bid for respect from his shrewish wife. But none of these character arcs are interesting enough to consume 104 minutes of your life – unless watching angry people rant is your idea of a good time.