Old Dogs

This week, I'm thankful for family, Gourmet Magazine's recipe for adobo turkey with red-chile gravy, and the fact that I didn't jump the gun and squander the title of Year's Worst Movie early. Nothing, not Renee Zellweger in a Minnesota snowdrift or even Shia LaBeouf sweet talking a yellow hotrod, should get in the way of "Old Dogs" claiming that distinction. It is an irredeemable affair.

Robin Williams and John Travolta co-star as longtime friends who co-own a sports marketing firm in New York. When we meet them, they are pitching their ill-defined services to a room full of Japanese businessmen, trying to make the biggest deal of their lives. Inexplicably, their strategy includes having Charlie (Travolta) warm up the suited crowd with a rambling, pointless story about the time Dan got divorced and playboy Charlie whisked him off to South Beach to show him a good time.

Dan ended up with the word "Fremont" tattooed on his chest (the goal had been "Freedom") and a new bride, Vicki (Kelly Preston, Travolta's real-life wife). All this took place seven years ago, the marriage was quickly annulled, and Vicki hasn't been heard from since. We're left in the dark as to how this relates to Dan and Charlie's sports marketing prowess, but the poor Japanese businessmen obligingly giggle and bow in the manner of hideously stereotyped Asians everywhere.

Vicki resurfaces, asks Dan to lunch, and reveals that the night in Miami yielded something more permanent than a tattoo. Her twins, Zach and Emily are introduced by their mother with all the grace of a lead balloon. "Daddy!" they shout, bounding up to the still-reeling Dan. There's no way any mother would have allowed this scene to take place, unless she was evil or completely nuts.

Instead, Vicki is supposed to be nice, sane and still a romantic prospect, although flaky; she needs Dan to take the kids because she's off to jail for two weeks, for committing an act of environmental activism. By extension, Charlie will also be in loco parentis. Make that locos; both are hopeless when it comes to children.

In theory, that sounds like the plot of an unremarkable but hardly heinous family movie: old dogs learn some new tricks; Bad Daddy and his playboy pal discover the joys of parenting, kind of like Eddie Murphy's "Imagine That" (which was awful, but not as awful as this). Not in this case. The kids are just props, practically extraneous to the story, and the jokes center almost entirely on everyone's assumption that Dan and Charlie are the children's gay grandparents. Granted, Williams' face is starting to look like that of an old crone, but he's only 58 and Travolta is 55. Yet Charlie and Dan pop pills like roommates in the nursing home. Naturally, there is a scene in which they accidentally take each other's pills and do embarrassing things in public.

It's not just that the jokes are tasteless and inappropriate for children. They aren't even a little bit funny. And the characters are neither realistic human beings nor appealing movie fantasies; they're just dopes we have to spend time with. Capable actors like Matt Dillon, Justin Long, Rita Wilson, Amy Sedaris and Ann-Margret turn up in bit parts, and none of them gets a line worth reading (Wilson resorts to crossing her eyes to get a laugh). Even Seth Green, generally an adroit and reliable comedian, bombs. That this is the late Bernie Mac's last screen credit is heartbreaking. You could find better, truer writing on the worst sitcom on television than in David Diamond and David Weissman's screenplay.

Between the screenplay and whatever lame direction Walt Becker gave ("Bigger! Smile harder!"), Williams seems to have his edge completely sanded off, and there is no sign of the guy who won an Oscar for "Good Will Hunting" (to be fair, Williams went through heart surgery, another trip to rehab and a divorce in recent years; those factors could be to blame). As for Travolta, who has suffered so much this year, it seems unjust that his natural amiability and considerable charm are not put to use. Charlie isn't a lovable lug, he's just a lug. If these are new tricks on offer for our old, beloved dogs, can't we let them go back to their old ones?

Mary Pols is a Bay Area-based journalist. She reviews movies for Time.com and was for many years a film critic for the San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times. She is also the author of a memoir, "Accidentally on Purpose," published in 2008 by Ecco/HarperCollins. When she's inspired, usually by something weird, she blogs about it at www.maryfpols.com.