Bill O’Byrne’s Bargain Bin Blues: Last Vegas

Last Vegas: $$$1/2

• Directed by on Turtletaub.
• Written by Dan Fogelman.
• Starring Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeeman, Robert De Niro, Kevin Kline.

PHIL vs BILL
Last Vegas is not quite the comedy of last resort it could have been. It sounds like an over-the-hill Hangover — four childhood pals in their 60s and 70s reunite for a bachelor party in Sin City — but Dan Fogelman (Tangled, The Guilt Trip) wrote his screenplay years earlier. While the scenario is safe and predictable, and riddled with wheezing old-geezer gags, the cast’s chemistry, and some gentle observations on aging and friendship, make Vegas more winning than it deserves to be. The only extra of note is a filmmakers’ commentary. — Phil Wakefield.

Five ageing Hollywood superstars walk into an amiable comedy about four old guys in Las Vegas. And that’s about all you need to know as to whether you will like Last Vegas.

It’s a nice, undemanding 1913 comedy about four guys who have a past going back to when they were in their own pre-teen Brooklyn street gang. The sort that you don’t really worry too much about on a dark street.

Billy, Michael Douglas, is the charismatic leader, Morgan Freeman is Archie, Robert De Niro is Paddy and Kevin Kline is Sam, with Sophie their female accomplice.

Fifty-eight years after meeting them (in a great intro segment) and Sophie, Paddy’s wife, is dead and he’s distraught, Archie’s had a stroke, and a couple of marriages, Sam has been ghettoised in Florida along with the rest of the 65+ population of the United States and Billy is about to marry a 32-year-old who looks rather nice in lingerie.

But is it love or just fear of getting old alone? This moral quandary is help assuaged by his immense wealth.

Of course, I could use the character names here, but this is an ensemble. Hell, this is an Ensemble ensemble and at no stage can you really shake the idea that this is Douglas, De Niro and Freeman being themselves.

De Niro gets a short joke thrown at him – he IS really short! – and the others make fun of Douglas’s hair transplant.

Kline [upon seeing Douglas]: Where did you get the extra hair?

Freeman: His ass.

Kline is the only one who seems a character. He is the goofy one with the lovely wife but he has lust in his heart for some flesh that hasn’t been around since before NASA.

When his wife drops him off at the airport she gives him a card with a condom and a Viagra. It’s a surprisingly sweet moment. Kline waves goodbye and then breaks into a little dance of unadulterated glee. It probably should be adulterated glee, but that sounds like glee that has had a roofie added, which has a bit of a Vegas link, but spoils the sweetness.

And nothing about this is unpleasant. If you start to squirm because Kline gets creepy, as only an elderly bearded man in a cheesecutter hat and a Viagra in Vegas can get, he makes it sweet and funny. Anger between Douglas and De Niro over their love for Sophie? Fatal knifefight. Or sweet resolution. Probably that.

The fifth superstar is Mary Steenburgen as Diana, a former tax consultant who now sings old standards in a tiny, under-populated hotel bar. It could happen I guess.

Steenburgen is the go-to gal whenever you want sexy, smart, funny, clever, vulnerable, wise, long limbed and gorgeous all in one. Plus she was in Step Brothers. And one of Woody Allen’s forgotten best, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, which may have died at the box office but it goes to show how witless the box office can be.

Of course, she becomes the love interest, in fact, the second of two love triangles. Which could make for a love rectangle. Or love square. Which starts to sound like four-square dancing cousins in some small valley in an isolated American mountain range who find lovin’ in each other’s do-si-do so I will derail that train of thought right now.

It’s pure myth. The weekend gets magically funded, Sam almost gets to sexy with a nubile gal, old hurts are healed, new love is found, and clever lines are said. It’s The Hangover that will be easily watched by people 50-plus under-75.

Don’t ask me why, but there is a funny generation gap over that age and most just won’t think Kline’s “blowjob” line would be funny. Plus most people in that era have a sneaking suspicion they haven’t aged as badly as everyone else since Rumors was released. Mirrors be damned.

The rest of the cast includes Jerry Ferrara (Turtle from Entourage, above with Freeman) who is disappointingly one dimensional, there is a surprisingly good cameo from Curtis (50 Cent) Jackson, and Redfoo has a scene in which he is his usual annoying dickhead self.

The extras are minimal, short promotional trailers pretty much, though there is a commentary by director Jon Turteltaub.

It is a nice film. It’s not edgy, and there are a few rough edges. But there’s a scene right near the end with the camera on Michael Douglas as he’s watching his friends crap away at each other and you see what a joy it is to have friends that last through all the ages that life throws at us.

Three-and-a-half stars out of five. There are some extra bits here. Possibly related to Mary Steenburgen: http://kiwispacepatrol.com/