If you thought “Wild Hogs” was a riot, and apparently many of you did (the 2007 movie earned $170 million at the U.S. box office and played in Memphis for 23 weeks), you’ll probably be amused as well by the golf balls to the crotch, the karaoke jokes, the comical use of the “Chariots of Fire” theme, the bachelors-try-to-cook-food humor and the other comedy innovations found in “Old Dogs,” a second slice of middle-age crazy from director Walt Becker and star John Travolta.

Robin Williams (left) and John Travolta yuk it up as a pair of middle-age bachelors in "Old Dogs."

It's a family affair as Ella Bleu Travolta and her real-life mom, Kelly Preston, star with John Travolta in "Old Dogs."

Old Dogs

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Rated PG for some mild rude humor

Length: 88 minutes

Released: November 25, 2009 Nationwide

Score: 0.5

Cast: John Travolta, Robin Williams, Kelly Preston, Seth Green, Ella Bleu Travolta

Director: Walt Becker
Producer: Andrew Panay, Robert Levy, Peter Abrams
Writer: David Diamond, David Weissman
Genre: Comedy
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures

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An old guys-on-motorcycles farce, “Wild Hogs” teamed Travolta with Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy. Because Robin Williams is more manic than any four men, he and Travolta pretty much have “Old Dogs” to themselves, although the late Bernie Mac does show up, in his last film role, as the developer of a “human puppeteering mechanism,” which gives an idea of the elaborate and implausible lengths the film will travel to set up a slapstick sequence. Also in the cast are Matt Dillon, very amusing as a gung-ho scout leader, and Seth Green, whose interaction with a zoo gorilla is probably the comic highlight.

Travolta and Williams are aging bachelors, lifelong best friends and successful sports marketeers thrown for a loop when Williams’ short-term ex-wife shows up with a pair of twins in tow (and I’m not talking about the inappropriately low-cut outfits that the mother wears throughout the film). The twins are Williams’, the result of his one-night stand with the woman, whom he married on a whim one drunken night and divorced the next day. The woman is played by Kelly Preston, Travolta’s real-life wife; one of the twins is Ella Bleu Travolta, the couple’s daughter. The other twin is Conner Rayburn of Nashville.

Add scary music, and some scenes in “Old Dogs” could come straight from a horror movie, with no need for re-editing, as when Williams is trapped in a tanning booth, or when Williams slams the lid of a car trunk onto a woman’s arms, just like Terry O’Quinn did in “Stepfather 2.” Visually, the movie is tough to sit through; the lighting and photography are dull and ugly. At one point, The Clash’s “Police on My Back” is heard on the soundtrack, apparently to pump up the action, although the song has nothing to do with anything occurring onscreen. When in doubt, Becker inserts a close-up of Travolta’s big friendly dog, and adds a funny dog moan to the image, as if the critter were thinking, “What fools these mortals be.”

Utterly predictable and fitfully amusing, “Old Dogs” may not remain on Memphis movie screens for 23 weeks, but thanks to television and video, it will never go away.

— John Beifuss, 529-2394