Excuse Me, Sir, Your Chemically-Induced Boner Needs Draining
Pacino and Walken. Walken and Pacino. If you want to know what’s great about Stand Up Guys, just look at this picture, which says it all. They have a natural chemistry, an indescribable watchability, that makes you wish they’d appear together in a movie that doesn’t require Pacino to get blood sucked out of his tumescent old boner. Yep, Stand Up Guys is that kind of movie. Dear Stand Up Guys Writers, CC: Hollywood: Not every movie about old guys needs a Viagra joke. Sincerely, Everyone. When Pacino started shoveling pills into his mouth while Walken cautioned, “Hey… VAL, maybe you… should slow DOWN a bit… those pills… are STRONG,” I thought to myself, “Ooh, the set up on this obvious joke is so labored, maybe they’re planning to flip the script on us!” Spoiler alert, they weren’t, and they didn’t, because this is a January movie. It’s like Pacino’s still trying to compete with DeNiro, who’s already old hat at boner stabbings after Ben Stiller stabbed his in Little Fockers. It makes you long for the days when DeNiro/Pacino was a Beatles/Beach Boys-esque rivalry that made them both better.
As you’ve gathered, Stand Up Guy‘s script is its achilles heel. Its achilles boner, say. We open with Christopher Walken (Doc) picking up Al Pacino (Val) after a 28-year stint in the joint. The knock-around guys and former partners are each other’s only friends, making it that much sadder when we learn that Walken has been sent to kill Pacino, under penalty of death should he fail. Pacino knows he’s doomed, and they’ve got one last night together to make it count, which they do by banging hookers, boosting cars, and breaking Alan Arkin out of an old folk’s home. It’s sort of a poor man’s In Bruges. A poor, old man’s In Bruges, with bad Viagra jokes.
