Bill Burr, Gentrified

In Old Dads, proudly crotchety standup comedian Bill (“Billy Boy”) Burr takes his grumpy Generation X take on modern life to the big screen, or at least your Netflix menu.

The movie features a trio of long-term buddies, Judd Apatow-style lost boys hitting or just past 50. Jack Kelly (Burr), Connor Brody (Bobby Cannavale) and Mike Richards (Bokeem Woodbine), rail against the pussified world that’s passing them by. Slow developers, they are also just starting families or going in for a second try. Largely depending on your demographic and feelings on the threat posed by “wokeism” to the nation’s testosterone levels, hilarity ensues. Sort of.

The necessary conflict to launch the action arises when a conglomerate buys the vintage sports jersey company the boys founded and puts a Gen-Zer  in charge. The sneakily good Curt Cobain lookalike, a somewhat spindly Miles Robbins, proud son of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, plays Aspen Bell, the new company head, reviled symbol of all that’s wrong with corporate America.

His first action is “liberating” all employees born before 1988. Not to worry. He gifts them all with subscriptions to Zip Recruiter. Aspen follows with a chin stroking riff on whether his inspiration, Steve Jobs, ever actually invented anything or whether the Apple co-founder’s true genius lay in just telling people to do stuff. (We’ll let Steve Wozniak answer that.)

Robbins has his father’s intelligent twinkly eyes and through them transcends what could have been a thankless straw man part ably conveying both the bemusement and contempt with which his generation regards their easily befuddled tech-phobic elders. Aspen’s struggle to understand why these three relics are still inexplicably in the work force and not down in Florida playing pickleball amidst the palms is palpable.

On the other end of the age spectrum, bespectacled and wildly coiffed, his long stringy grey hair looking like the splatter pattern of a shotgun slaying, Bruce Dern has a disturbing cameo as an unpleasant Uber driver. Dern appears at a critical moment as a Ghost of Christmas Future augury of what will become of Jack if he doesn’t mend his ways. He’s also one of the clearly irredeemable people introduced in the film to differentiate our hero from those who truly cannot be restomoded into our right-thinking world.

Katie Aselton does some good work as Jack’s exasperated pregnant wife Leah. She’s basically there to groan and signal a maternal tolerance for Jack’s excesses. In her indulgent eyes, her hubby’s anger issues and insufficient empathy stem from an unhappy childhood. But even Leah has her limits.

We should credit first-time director Burr with being generous with his fellow actors. He gives Cannavale and Richards  plenty of rope. They handle their “I love you man” childhood pal roles with aplomb. Entertaining scene stealing even amongst the smaller parts abounds. We see you Travis Romine.

The story speeds along as basically a strung together sequence of Burr’s edgy standup routines sanded down to something suitable for a network sitcom or movie of the week, right down to hot, young, overly understanding wives (three!) paired with decidedly average-looking older guys. There’s nary an age-appropriate body-positive female or buzzkill Bechdel-approved exchange to be found.

Along the way, Burr throws in some interesting but safe topical stuff on pervasive smart device surveillance, data privacy, and morality clauses in employment contracts. But true to its title the movie pays particular attention to the intense financial and emotional pressure upper-middle-class parents face trying to ensure their progeny retain their privilege by adroitly gaming America’s grossly unequal education system. Jack’s initial failure to swallow his pride and put his kindergarten age son’s educational future first results in a temporary split with Leah. The inevitable Hangover-style road trip with his equally self-absorbed pals follows.

This leads to one of the best scenes in the movie, wherein the softer cornered Burr seems to be winking at his edgier self during the de rigueur for this genre boys night out at a nudie bar. (Is there an easier way to squeeze a generous dollop of gratuitous female nudity into a film?) Amidst the neon, stale beer stench, minimal lighting, high-energy fun and all-round self-loathing, the importance of family comes to our hero as a dancer bends over in front of him slapping her butt. Then in a scene Burr’s mentor Dave Chappelle would surely approve of Jack peers over the lady’s toned cheeks towards the camera and solemnly intones his reaffirmation of family values.

Following close on the hair-tossing stiletto heels of this, the gentleman’s club staff eagerly jump on an opportunity to sadistically pummel their patrons. Aspen, of all people, saves the day when he performs the Generation Z reflex response to a crisis. Leaping upon a table to film the beat down with his phone, he loudly threatens to expose the boob-bar bouncers’ violent excesses on social media. These are “dads,” for crying out loud.

A call announcing Jack’s wife is going into labor quickly follows. Our heroes dust themselves off and race to the hospital to be there as the birth unfolds and everything wraps up the way you knew it would.  Everybody ends up back with their wives, married, or having kids.

Over a concluding gauzy, golden hued scene of ball tossing in a bucolic backyard right out of “The Natural” a suitably reformed, bromide voicing Jack reaffirms love and family as reasons for existence.

A more ambitious, less easily-digested, darker comedy would stray over into early Martin Scorsese territory–something Burr the standup is a huge fan of–and find Jack not reuniting with his wife after failing to change his angry ways, ending up in a basement apartment with a hot plate paying child support. However, challenging and agitating people wanting to watch something mildly diverting on Netflix before they go to sleep was clearly not Burr’s goal here.

Fair enough.

Old Dads is funny and worth watching. Unlike so much of the endless stream of content we are seeing it will hold your attention and make you chuckle. But fans of Burr’s take-no-prisoners stand up humor might be disappointed in this tame, post-anger-management therapy, a little gun-shy version of their favorite ranter.