‘So apt for this day and age’
Bill Burr’s new movie, Old Dads, is continuing to delight fans who are particularly taken with one scene where the comic gives a reluctant and insincere apology.
The film, that dropped on Netflix on October 20, sees the 55-year-old US comic play the part of an old dad – similar to him in real life – called Jack Kelly who takes issue with the “wokeness” of the world, much like he does in his stand-up routines.
Thankfully Jack – like Doug in The Hangover – has his trusty mates at hand – Bobby Cannavale and Bokeem Woodbine – to help him navigate parenthood.
But Jack’s brand of parenting doesn’t go down well with everyone, like the prissy principal at his son’s private school, or his millennial tech boss. Both Jack’s boss and his wife, played by Katie Aselton, want him to seek professional help for his anger issues. Naturally, he refuses.
“When a middle-aged father and his two best friends sell their company to a millennial, they soon find themselves out of step and behind the times as they struggle to navigate a changing world of culture, career and fatherhood,” the synopsis for Old Dads reads.
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The movies comes off the back of Burr’s uccessful Netflix series F is For Family, where he plays an emotional powder keg dad in the ’80s as his family struggles through financial hardship.
In one scene in Old Dads Jack is made to apologise to a room of people at his son’s school after an outburst at the director of the kindergarten. After preparing to do so, the director makes him do it to the assembled parents and children.
Jack really struggles to come across sincere.
“Looking back I let my emotions get the best of me yesterday. I wish I could have chosen my words a bit differently,” he says.
“I’m sorry that six of you heard this and told the over 40. And to any of the children that heard what I said it’s never OK to say those words. I was very wrong.
“That’s it. Have a nice morning and keep using those paper straws. They get soggy, but they’re good for the turtles.”
Viewers thought the scene was an amusing reflection of modern life, including how often insincere public apologies are.
“So apt for this day and age,” one person wrote on X. Another added that is showed how “people get offended for the simplest s***.”
Another added: “This whole scene made me mad. I’m totally on Bill’s side.”
The movie makes light of the hypocrisy of people who call out others but don’t address their own problematic behaviour.
Despite people also rating the movie as a fun comedy – it hasn’t won over the critics.
On Rotten Tomatoes it has a critics rating of just 24 per cent. The audience score, however, is 88.
Oliver Jones as the Observer noted: “Rather than challenge himself, Burr instead uses the film to adapt his schtick into a three-hander bro comedy addressing the generational divide regarding modern mores and language.”
And Todd McCarthy at Deadline Hollywood Daily wrote: “A boorish and obnoxiously vulgar comedy that, since it can’t claim any other great distinction, might well have been expressly written to break the all-time record for use of the f-word in the major studio movie.”
Meanwhile, David Ehrlich from indieWire said: “The whole ‘does it offend you, yeah?’ routine only works if someone commits to it, and Burr is too much of a softy at heart to go all the way.
“He doesn’t want to piss people off, he just wants to air his grievances about progressive culture.”
Anna Menta at Decider wrote that while “at first glance” the movie appears to be for dads who want to raise “a little man and not a f****** pussy”, like using the term “snowflake” as in insult and think the 1980s was the greatest decade of all time – Burr does appear to have an “agenda beyond lamenting the ‘woke mob’.”
“In fact, buried beneath hackneyed jokes about gender neutral party themes and cancel culture, Burr has an important message for his ageing male fanbase: Go to therapy.”
After the apology scene, the movie ends with Jack learning to control his anger issues.
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