Road House (1989)

Nic brought the pleated-linen-pants-and-mullet energy this week with Road House (1989), a movie both dads discovered in their late teens and have been unironically-slash-ironically in love with ever since. Steve first caught it during a freshman year hangout in a dorm room with a big TV and a bigger DVD collection. Nic remembers it as the ultimate bro night movie — rewatchable, quotable, and conveniently unappealing to any women who might've been around. Not that there were options.

Patrick Swayze stars as Dalton, a legendary "cooler" — a job title neither dad has ever encountered in real life despite a combined several decades of barroom experience. Dalton is recruited to clean up the Double Deuce, a honky-tonk in Jasper, Missouri, where the nightly routine includes sweeping up eyeballs, throwing bottles through chicken wire, and negotiating breast access for cash. The town has maybe 5,000 people, one stoplight, and inexplicably more LA-caliber women than a casting call. Nic notes they all look like Larry and Balki's girlfriends from Perfect Strangers, which is an observation that shouldn't work as well as it does.

Dalton lays down three rules — never underestimate your opponent, take it outside, and be nice — and Steve connects his philosophy to, of all things, Schitt's Creek. Meanwhile, Ben Gazzara's Brad Wesley runs the town through a protection racket and a JCPenney, and the dads cannot get over the fact that this man's big power move is bragging about bringing a mid-tier department store to rural Missouri. His introduction across three scenes amounts to: helicopter, pool party, reckless driving. "Hell of a guy," Nic deadpans.

Sam Elliott shows up looking cooler than he's ever looked, Keith David shows up long enough to say they're out of whiskey, and Nic mourns the movie they could've had if the long humping scene had been replaced with more of either. The throat rip is everything it's remembered to be. The doctor's moral outrage about it is baffling to both dads. And Dalton's body count goes from zero to roughly eight in about fifteen minutes, which feels like poor pacing or exceptional restraint, depending on your perspective.

Road House wraps up the '80s leg of 2 Dads 2 Decades, and the dads send the decade off with a movie that's half popcorn classic, half beautiful disaster. The premise doesn't make sense, the plot has more holes than Emmett's house has walls, and Dalton may have technically been the worst thing to ever happen to Jasper. But God, is it fun.