Vieux papas

The funniest humour is humour that tells it like it is. Jack's confrontations with his kids' school staff and other parents, and their outragous militant "faux sensitive" attacks, are painful to watch because we live with them in real life. Every one of them has a ridiculous shield of political correctness up around them, and they use it as a weapon, thus completely undermining how "sensitive" they claim to be. Jack calls them out on it, saying at one point, "All you care about is not getting in trouble". The obnoxious 20-something who takes over their company is exactly the tiresome, lazy arrogant twit we all dread as a new boss - has never gotten his hands dirty, never worked a day in his life, has been taught by his mommy that he's "special" so he can treat people like dirt. Unfortunately, about 2/3 of the way through, Jack's "epiphany" ruins the whole thing. His wife shuts him out because he has "anger" problems. No he doesn't. He doesn't hit people, wreck property, throw people out of their jobs, sit on his behind while others do all the work, or torture his schoolmates or coworkers with holier-than-though attitude. He calls people names somertimes, and he yells sometimes. That's about it. Otherwise, he's the most honest, hard-working, fair person in the whole story. It's sad that the movie goes south by having him "change" to become a gutted namby pamby shell of his real self. That is a HORRIBLE thing, but it is presented in the film as though he has reached some successful peak.

I suspect this film will get some bad reviews, particularly if you aren't familiar with Bill Burr's stand up or you find his style of comedy a bit much (Michael McIntyre he's not). Personally I'm a big fan of Bill and the character he plays in this film is pretty much the one you get in his stand up shows.

The movie was written by Bill and that's evident straight from the start with the dialogue very much in his style and in line with his stand up contains several amusing scenes with middle aged men trying to understand the world of woke. However I felt the film lost some pacing and ran out of steam a little in the second half, as Bill's character makes the transition into something more acceptable to modern society.

Worth a watch if you like Bill. If you don't then maybe not.

Old Dads is at its best when it's closest to Bill Burr's stand up. A mixture of him just complaining about everything and his fear of passing his untamed anger onto his children. It struggles a lot more when it turns those complaints into people and is very rushed in its resolution but remains a fun watch overall.

Bill Burr himself is a good lead, funny yet flawed with some pretty vulnerable moments. Bokeem Woodbine works really well as the calmest of the three and Bobby Cannavale is so entertaining in this completely over the top performance. He's obsessed with being seen as cool and it leads to some of the best moments.

Bill Burr's direction is fine. As a debut there's always added pressure to bring something extra to announce yourself and whilst Burr doesn't do that it remains technically competent and his writing and performance combined make up for the journeyman filmmaking on display.

A refreshingly unapologetic and on point observational comedy.

I sat there thinking why havnt I seen anything like this in years.

Well reading some other reviews I got my answer, yell and cry load enough and you get what you want. If what you want is boring paint by numbers PC appease everyone crap.

I'm thankful to say this is not that.

It does at some points push a little to far with Bobby's I used to be cool narrative.

My wife and I both sat there saying wow this is so true. We need more comedy's that are not afraid to by funny, there is a reason all the comedy's you love and remember we're not made in the last decade.

This film will divide generations, I consider myself as quite a liberal sort of person but the mauling this is getting from certain critics says more about them than anything. If you like Bill Burr then you'll love this movie, if you are easily offended and like to pretend that everything can be sanitised and pigeonholed away then you probably won't.

It's a Bill Burr stand up routine in the form of a movie, it's not cancel culture (as some would describe) but more about how ridiculous the world seems these days compared to what people like me (a 50 something) grew up with. Personally I found it laugh out loud funny, something original in a sea of mediocrity.