“It’s not easy to admit when we are wrong.”

At its dirty rotten core, Old Dads is an earnest film about how hard it is to be in the wrong, and rarely does it show us this in any of the right ways. And despite how progressive the script is, it’s also hard to seriously stomach at times, mostly because the lead character is never entirely morally wrong, even if he does lose his temper more often than not. That’s where the clumsily written film misses the most though; a few scenes balance his old school ideology mixed with modern thinking well, but too many are completely one-sided, and are eventually undone by the movie’s lazy, lackluster, hunky dory final pitch and catch sequence. Old Dads seems sincere and the performances are fine, but the script is an unmitigated disaster. You can’t make something resonate out of empty noise.

The characters in Old Dads are just that; none feel like real people for a second, and I’d challenge anyone to the tall task of recalling their names a week later…I’m not sure it’s possible. Nevertheless, the flatfooted and altogether listless endeavor is headed by Jack Kelly (Bill Burr), a grumpy and borderline basic man with a white hot temper, who was raised hard and is a bit rough around the edges. Jack encourages a child to rub some dirt on a scrape after a fall; younger parents in the neighborhood suggest Neosporin and a Band-Aid. Old Dads shows the changing of the tide, and Jack turns to his best friends and coworkers for reassurance when the waves starts washing ashore. Connor (Bobby Cannavale) has no say against his helicopter wife Jackie (Cara Brody), and Mike (Bokeem Woodbine) fears a future with his much younger yet completely devoted partner Britney (Reign Edwards). Jack is in the middle, and although he’s the protagonist, he’s the least interesting of the bunch, especially compared to his endearing soulmate Leah (Katie Aselton).

There are a few occasional bright spots in Old Dads, like when Jack gets kicked out of the house and ends up at a motel, agreeing with a chain-smoking resident who eventually goes on a fart fueled tirade against immigrants. The scene has a juxtaposition where Jack is forced to for once contemplate his stance, and the muddled middle is where the laughter lives; it’s the closest the aimless script gets to nailing Burr’s raw and honest comedy routines over the years. But so much of the horribly written film goes to shallow extremes, introducing a lazy next gen antagonist in Aspen Bell (Miles Robbins) who serves as a punchline and little more, an early schooling principal so obviously evil (Rachael Harris), and sets out on a drunken and coked-up makeshift Bachelor party on the outskirts of Vegas before the sudden news of the birth of Jack’s next child. It’s disheveled.

There’s something so immediately faulty about this film, and as a massive fan of Burr’s stand-up, it disappoints me to know that it boils down to how recycled the material feels. Anyone who’s watched him has heard that, seen it all in the Netflix cartoon F s for Family, and understand his deep sense of rage. I wanted to love this movie because I love Burr’s presence on the stage, but it doesn’t translate to the screen or through his direction, in what’s undoubtedly the worst rendition of a routine we’ve heard countless times. When the movie tells you both structurally and emotionally that it’s in the peak of the classic 3rd act – yet there are 54 minutes left – you know something is off. Old Dads is the most frustrating miss of the year for me thus far. It pains me to admit how bad this one is, and I’m not sure I’d ever watch it again.

“There’s just not a lot of layers.”

Rating: 2.5 out of 5