I know Bill Burr is a standup but I don’t follow standup… so to me he’s that guy on a couple episodes of The Mandalorian. I gather the humor in Old Dads is based on his act… observational comedy from a grumpy Gen Xer. If that’s the case, the movie’s on brand and I liked it more than The Machine (but I like an oozing blister more than The Machine).

The flick stars Bill Burr as an older dad who loves his wife and his young son. But he’s often angry and butts heads with the millennial parents until he gets in trouble with everyone.

I rather liked how this movie starts… and then it doesn’t seem to go anywhere and ends. I guess it ambles about its overall theme of being a GenX dad… but it felt so aimless by the end it was hard to focus or care about.

Burr’s observation humor often amounts to “why can’t I say that?” or “oh those millennials” <shakes fist>. Which, yeah, I can see the angle… it’s kind of unfair to expect older generations to automatically understand how they’re supposed to behave when nobody sent out a memo. But it’s pretty standard “get off my lawn!” humor.

Eventually the movie has to get around to an actual plot or narrative structure… and while it it doesn’t go off the rails, it does wander off in a distracted way. I saw where it was going but was baffled why it took the detours it did. It got blah.

So, yeah, I appreciate what the film was going for but it needed to be more than a bunch of observation humor loosely connected with a vague hand-waving plot.

Score: 72