Old Dogs (2009) poster
2009 · comedy · family · political · sports

Old Dogs

Directed by Walt Becker1h 28m2009
ElsewhereIMDb5.341kRT5%Metacritic19
  • cosy
  • brisk
  • gentle
  • redemptive
  • intimate
Movie DNA

Cosy, breathless, gentle comedy / family, grounded in texture. Redemptive, intimate, tender, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Charlie and Dan have been best friends and business partners for thirty years; their Manhattan public relations firm is on the verge of a huge business deal with a Japanese company. With two weeks to sew up the contract, Dan gets a surprise: a woman he married on a drunken impulse nearly nine years before (annulled the next day) shows up to tell him he's the father of her twins, now seven, and she'll be in jail for 14 days for a political protest. Dan volunteers to keep the tykes, although he's uptight and clueless. With Charlie's help is there any way they can be dad and uncle, meet the kids' expectations, and still land the account?

Our read · Old Dogs (2009) reads as a cosy, breathless, grounded comedy · family · political entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, tender in temperature, redemptive in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Old Dogs

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want broad slapstick and sudden-dad chaos with Travolta and Williams.

ends warmyou’ll be fine aftersteady all the waygrips by minute 12attention 2/5breezes by
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upcringe humiliation

Skip it tonightSkip if lazy studio comedy and groan-worthy gags kill your mood.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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