By now you’d think that there would be a definable exploitation category (“grampsploitation”?) for movies like this that depict socially rebellious elderly men in comedic situations. The Grumpy Old Men franchise arguably kicked off this subgenre, and Senior Moment is yet another cheap ploy to get cinematic mileage out of featuring old-timers making desperate onscreen attempts to be hip in an increasingly youth-obsessed world.
Of course with geriatric star power like William Shatner and Christopher Lloyd leading the cast (not to mention former Designing Women star Jean Smart), you’d think that there might be something salvageable here. Shatner plays Victor Martin, a septuagenarian retired pilot living it up in Palm Springs: he drives a vintage Porsche (that he occasionally drag races), and young local bikini models can’t seem to get enough of him. Lloyd plays his obnoxious sidekick, Sal Spinelli, who always seems to be a reluctant accomplice in Victor’s ill-advised automotive exploits, spouting cliched fogey-isms like “I’m too old for this shit!” among other trite asides, not all of which are intelligible.
But Victor’s self-conscious battle against Father Time is dealt a serious blow when he has his license revoked and his precious Porsche impounded for putting the town’s population in jeopardy every time he decides to take a joyride. So then the rest of the film centers on Victor’s quest to get his license, his car, and thus his life back. Along the way, he finds an unlikely love interest in Caroline (Jean Smart) who owns a local roadside eatery called the Cuckoo Café (Victor miraculously finds a way to fix the café’s broken cuckoo clock—a lame subplot if there ever was one).
It’s just a shame to see Shatner in his Golden Years reduced to such a geriatric caricature here: often it seems the script’s entire reason for existing is to mine the limited comedic potential in having Star Trek’s Captain Kirk say “dipshit” and “motherfucker.” The fact that Victor to at least some degree finally accepts his fate and responsibilities as a senior citizen by rights should have had some redemptive effect on the film as a whole—but it just doesn’t. By this late stage, lame jokes and tired cliches have flatlined Senior Moment beyond all hope of rescue from mediocrity. Not Recommended.