The Crew

Directed by Michael Dinner Written by Barry Fanaro Richard Dreyfus Bobby Burt Reynolds Joey "Bats" Dan Hedaya Mike the Brick Seymour Cassel Tony the Mouth Jennifer Tilly Ferris Jeremy Piven bad cop Carrie Anne Moss good cop

Richard Dreyfus, as Bobby, talks through and over pretty much the entirety of “The Crew,” a middling comedy that does for mob life what “Space Cowboys” did for astronaut life. Bobby is the smart one among a quartet of small-time hoods, now living out their dotage in Miami Beach, mere shadows of their former wiseguy selves. They share a rundown condo, which is being sniffed out by yuppies looking for homes in the neighborhood, undergoing a renaissance ever since “that Madonna broad” decided it was a hip place to live. To avoid having their rent skyrocket, the boys hatch a scheme to scare the newcomers off. As one might expect, things don’t go quite as they had planned. One improbable plot twist begets others, as the picture lurches towards its rather predictable conclusion.

I do not know if this movie, along with “Space Cowboys,” represents a new (“new” being a relative term; after all, this is Hollywood) trend--old guys past their prime recreating their exciting youths while making jokes about their prostates. I can see it now: movies about retired firefighters, dog catchers, and bakers, all dreaming of what once was. After all, it has been done before (think “Going in Style” and “Tough Guys”). The pictures never really work, though, try though they might to tread the fine line between acknowledging the indignities of aging while embracing a never say die attitude in their protagonists. “The Crew” is no better or worse than most. Barry Fanaro’s script contains just enough clever gags and lines to keep us in our seats and compensate for its more glaring shortcomings in the area of plot and character development. Veteran director Michael Dinner keeps the pace brisk for the most part, and he continues the evolving tradition of paying homage--by copying it--to Scorsese’s famous restaurant tracking scene in “Goodfellas.” Reynolds, Hedaya, Cassel, and Dreyfus are pros, though, and I have to hand it to these guys.

Whatever the shortcomings of the script, or the genre, they (like Eastwood and company in “Space Cowboys”) throw themselves into the proceedings with enthusiasm, at once acknowledging and lampooning their very real-life aging. Perhaps that is why these pictures resonate more than they have any right to. Intentionally or not, they speak to a certain truth: youth will vanish, infirmity threatens, death awaits us all. Seeing older actors, still at the top of their game, playing older characters who recapture some of their youthful magic, gives us all hope that we might do the same.