While older actresses are competing for the slim number of roles available to them, the 70- and 80-something men of Hollywood remain so in-demand that we’re literally running out of new arrangements of them to toss into lightheartedly contentious comedies. Since The Bucket List reinvigorated the cantankerous old-boys genre post-Grumpier Old Men, we’ve had Stand Up Guys, Last Vegas, and Going in Style exhausting all combinations of septua/octogenarians still spry enough to deliver a Viagra joke. Yet through all these variations of elderly males palling around like a nightmare vision of Grown Ups future, somehow Tommy Lee Jones has manage to avoid these chuckling parades of dwindling testosterone.
Until now, that is.
Lured by the dulcet tones of genre veteran Morgan Freeman, Jones makes his inevitable physical and mental decline into the field with Just Getting Started. Written and directed by Ron Shelton, who hasn’t put something in theaters since 2003’s Hollywood Homicide, the comedy sees Freeman as Duke, the hot shot Lothario of a luxury retirement community he runs. When cowboy hat-sporting Leo (Jones, naturally) moves in, an immediate rivalry forms, and the two compete on the golf course and for the affections of another new, noticeably younger resident (Rene Russo).
Oh, but also, Duke is in witness protection and the mob is actively trying to kill him. So it’s a good thing that, like every Tommy Lee Jones character, Leo is ex-military/FBI. What a delightfully unlikely alliance they’ll bicker through!
Just Getting Started hits theaters December 8. It’s somehow not yet clear when we’ll get a crotchety rivalry involving Freeman, Dustin Hoffman, and Harvey Keitel.
