Metascore

Overwhelming dislike - based on 22 Critics What's this?

User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 85 Ratings

  • Starring: John Travolta, Robin Williams, Seth Green
  • Summary: Two best friends -- one unlucky-in-love divorcee and the other a fun-loving bachelor -- have their lives turned upside down when they're unexpectedly charged with the care of six-year-old twins while on the verge of the biggest business deal of their lives. The not-so-kid-savvy bachelors stumble in their efforts to take care of the twins, leading to one debacle after another, and perhaps to a new-found understanding of what's really important in life. (Walt Disney Pictures) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 22
  2. Negative: 16 out of 22
  1. It runs a fast 88 minutes, is broad as the waistlines of its stars, and is remarkably family-friendly if you don't mind bathroom humor.
  2. 50
    Nostalgia is part of the modest charm of this disposable but inoffensive picture. Old Dogs makes old dogs out of all of us.
  3. Old Dogs is so oafish, when it tosses us a biscuit, it feels like we've been smacked with a newspaper.
  4. Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    38
    This is not the Travolta of "Pulp Fiction," nor is it the Williams of "One Hour Photo." Though no animals were harmed in the making of Old Dogs, the lead actors were defanged. But like a pair of Labradors, they have a playful rapport.

See all 22 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 38
  2. Negative: 20 out of 38
  1. DonnaM
    9
    I thought it was super funny.
  2. Sandy
    8
    My husband & I enjoyed this movie & thought it was funny. The whole theater was laughing during the whole movie.
  3. I admit the movie has big flaws, but in the end its a heart warm family movie with Travolta and Robbins on the run.
  4. ChadS
    2
    With the start of Vicki's prison term nearing, the environmental activist's two kids need a babysitter while their mom does time in a state penitentary. It's a good thing that mom's one night stand wrote. Of all the people in the world, who better than your shotgun husband, a man you divorced after the liquor turned to pee and never saw again in the proceeding seven years, to feed and dress your flesh and blood. Money, notwithstanding, this man was a twenty-four-hour husband, but that's the movies for you. "Old Dogs", aside from being stupid, is also, formally, one of those films where childless professionals discover the joys of parenthood after pursuing successful careers in their respective fields. Robin Williams plays Dan, the dad, and John Travolta plays Charlie, the unwilling uncle-type; they're sports marketers who, in one uncomic comic scene, smear bear poop beneath their eyes by accident, then inexplicably, leave it on, as if both men forgot that animal excrement is gross. As Dan, Williams seemingly returns to those habitual heartwarming roles that moviegoers thought he had sworn off from taking after his career redefining performances in Mark Romanek's "One Hour Photo" and Christopher Nolan's "Insomnia". This fondness for excessive heartrendering(or is that heart-bludgeoning) theatrics(five words: enema bulb as faux-nose) carries on, but only ostensibly so, as in one scene, where Dan, dressed as a king, has tea with his princess-costumed daughter, which on closer inspection, avoids saccharine sweetness Curiously enough, Dan is in a full-bodied puppet suit, and under Charlie's control. The scene plays like a cry for help. After all, somebody is making Williams have this tender moment with a child actor. There's some anger here, dressed up as slapstick comedy, in which Dan maims a hand model's hands, and Seth Green's balls. And as for Travolta: Has it really been almost thirty years since he slapped around Debra Winger in "Urban Cowboy"? Expand

See all 38 User Reviews

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