J.K. Simmons (“Oz”) plays J. Kimball, an actor whose brother-in-law wants him to play an 85-year-old in a script enticingly titled “Do Not Resuscitate.” As directed by Simmons’ wife, Michelle Schumacher, this setup leads to an assisted-living facility called the Coconuts.
Here we find oldsters taking pole-dancing lessons, spiking the party punch with Viagra and re-creating the masturbation scene from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
Such laughs as there are come mostly from Simmons’ turn as the straight man, his deadpan reactions being twice as funny as the frantic mugging around him. (The main geezers are Lou Beatty Jr., Basil Hoffman and Tony Cummings; famous faces like Kevin Pollak and Breckin Meyer show up to be ill-used.)
It is a remarkably unattractive-looking movie. I don’t know when people voted that the seasick look of an iPhone video is now a desirable style.
The notion that your sunset years will be a morass of jokes about farts and colon exams, punctuated by the same sex obsessions that characterized adolescence, is far more depressing than watching somebody play shuffleboard and watch “Diagnosis: Murder.”
There’s a reason Maggie Smith’s magnificent old bat is the best-loved character on “Downton Abbey”: She’s always the smartest dame in the room. Retirement as a second chance to be as obnoxious as you were at 13 isn’t nearly as appealing.