Michael Moriatis / Netflix
Comedian Bill Burr acutely understands the power of a good rant—how anger has its own unique rhythm and flow. From his first HBO half hour in 2005 through his seven Netflix specials, Burr has built a career out of blowing his stack on stage, righteously and irrationally. Only recently has he found success applying that persona to fictional characters, in films like The King of Staten Island and his semi-autobiographical Netflix animated series F Is for Family. Now Burr returns with his directorial debut: Netflix’s Old Dads (Oct. 20), in which he casts himself as a man whose anger at the modern world threatens his family life.
Jack, Burr’s stand-in, loves being a father to his young son, but he constantly finds himself at odds with the people in his life, like thin-skinned parents or Dr. L (Rachael Harris), the obnoxious principal of his kid’s ultra-progressive private school. His attitude reaches critical mass when he calls Dr. L a “stumpy cunt” at the same time that his sports jersey company is made over by his new “woke” millennial CEO (Miles Robbins), who turns it into a “gender-neutral, carbon-neutral, 21st century lifestyle apparel brand.” In order to help provide for his son, Jack must learn to curb his anger and, alongside friends and company co-founders Connor (Bobby Cannavale) and Mike (Bokeem Woodbine), adjust to the changing times, lest he drive his pregnant wife (Katie Aselton) and child away for good.
Old Dads essentially adapts Burr’s stand-up into a narrative feature by addressing the underlying aggression of his persona. But rhetoric and drama are different beasts, and while Burr can construct strawmen and women on stage to knock down in an entertaining way, they become caricatures when embodied by actors on screen. Jack’s enemies in the film are such broad exaggerations of progressivism that the fictionalized Burr always has the moral high ground. Although Jack hurls a misogynistic slur at Dr. L, no one from any generation would support what provoked the outburst: the condescending glee in which she humiliated Jack for being two minutes late to pick up his child. (Later, she makes him apologize to the whole school in what resembles a show trial.) Jack, Connor, and Mike are fired by their boss for cracking wise about Caitlyn Jenner, but only because their conversation was surreptitiously recorded by a secret camera in a rental car, basically positioning potentially offensive speech against an invasion of privacy.