Last Vegas

While in theory it’s a good thing that Hollywood has finally realised old(er) people go to the movies, in practice this has led to the creation of Last Vegas. Which is a bad thing. Not that it starts out that way: Billy (Michael Douglas), Paddy (Robert De Niro), Archie (Morgan Freeman) and Sam (Kevin Kline) have been best friends since childhood. Now Billy is getting married – to a woman well under half his age, who he proposed to at a funeral – and he wants his best buds to be there on his bachelor weekend in Las Vegas.
Sam, who now lives in Florida, gets the green light to fool around from his wife; Archie, who his family treat as if he’s on death’s door, has to sneak out to attend. But Paddy still has a grudge against Billy over a girl many years ago, and even when they manage to twist his arm hard enough to get him to come along, he’s not happy about it – and that’s before they end up on stage judging a wet t-shirt contest and Redfoo starts thrusting his speedo-glad gonads in his face.
This is exactly what it looks like – The Hangover with old guys – yet somehow it manages to be even less funny than you’d think. The problem isn’t that old people can’t be funny – obviously all four of the main cast here have been funny in the past, will probably be funny again in the future and even have the occasional funny moment here. It’s that the comedy here almost entirely comes from the idea that seeing old people act like idiots is hilarious. Which is about as fundamental a misunderstanding of how comedy works as you can get.
Sure, old characters can be funny in certain situations: the wealthy dowager is never not funny when she gets a pie in the face, and seeing crusty old farts get their comeuppance is pretty much comedy gold. But here the jokes are largely about four average old guys acting like idiots, which works fine when it’s young guys (we expect them to be idiots), but here is mostly just sad. And who wants to leave a comedy thinking about the tragic inevitability of the waning of potency that comes with old age?
Written by Anthony Morris