Last Vegas

One cliché often dragged out to describe fiascos such as Last Vegas argues that the cast look to be having more fun than any potential audience. It doesn't really hold with this lumbering farce.

Robert De Niro and Michael Douglas appear bored and misused throughout. Morgan Freeman seems barely awake. Only Kevin Kline makes any sort of effort, but, flailing and grimacing a little too desperately, he gives the impression of a man seeking to re-enliven a party whose host has just choked to death on the cashew surprise. More power to the old crew. They look just as miserable as the rest of us.

This wretchedly cynical attempt to pick grey pounds from grey pockets follows four older gents – friends for 60 years – as they travel to Las Vegas (get it?) for a bachelor party. In an irony so on the nose you half-wonder if you’re dreaming, Douglas plays a deluded rich bloke engaged to a glamorous woman several decades his junior. De Niro is the angriest of the group. Kline is the jolliest. Freeman is the one most likely to slip unconscious when asked to intone a word of more than one syllable.

The jokes are so creaky you constantly find your hand itching for a can of Castrol. Gifted a suite after Freeman triumphs at blackjack, the guys listen as en employee explains that the rooms only became available because “Fiddy” just cancelled. Who? “Fifty” the drone wearily clarifies. “But you’d never get 50 people in here,” one of the gang retorts. Laugh? I almost chewed off my own fist.

All this is wretched enough. But Last Vegas achieves proper golden turkey status for its patronising attitude towards older people. The film seems to be arguing that one need not abandon fun and laughter as 70 looms. It also seems, however, that those years bring lazy thinking, sentimental brooding and an inability to open one's mouth without sounding like an unwanted antique.

Far from being liberating, the film ends up swinging two fingers towards the retirement home.