At first glance, Bill Burr’s Netflix movie, Old Dads—which began streaming today—appears to be a movie for dads who want to “raise a little man, and not a fucking pussy.” It’s a movie for people who use “snowflake” as an insult, who pride themselves for “saying what everyone is thinking,” and who believe the ’80s are the greatest decade of all time. In other words, a movie for Bill Burr fans.

But if you actually watch the film all the way to the end—as I admit I likely would not have done if I hadn’t been assigned to cover the film for my job—you might be pleasantly surprised to see that Burr has an agenda beyond lamenting what the “woke mob” has done to the youth of tomorrow. In fact, buried beneath hackneyed jokes about gender neutral party themes and cancel culture, Burr has an important message for his aging male fanbase: Go to therapy.

In the film, which Burr directed and co-wrote with Ben Tishler, the 55-year-old stand-up comedian stars as a man named Jack. Jack, like Burr himself, didn’t become a father until later in life. Luckily, Jack has a crew of like-minded, aging dad friends, played by Bobby Cannavale and Bokeem Woodbine. Unluckily, Jack finds that his hot-tempered, tough-guy attitude doesn’t mesh well with either the prissy principal at his son’s private school, or with the millennial techie new boss at his sportswear company. He quickly gets himself in trouble with both parties, much to the disappointment of his gorgeous, pregnant wife, Leah (played by Katie Aselton). Both Jack’s boss and his wife want him to seek professional help for his anger issues, but he refuses.

Eventually, Jack’s smart mouth gets him fired from his job and kicked out of his own home. At the film’s low point, he finds himself in the bargain bin equivalent of Vegas—Fantasy Springs Resort Casino and a strip club—too drunk to drive to the hospital to witness the birth of his second child. He and his buddies call a ride-share and end up with a driver even older and more curmudgeonly than Jack. His name is Richie, he’s played by 87-year-old Oscar-nominated actor Bruce Dern, and he’s a vision of what Jack might become if he continues to let his life be ruled by anger.

Jack watches as Richie belittles the birth of his child (“You know where I was when my rotten kid was born? I was down the street at the bar, having a beer and eating fried clams because that’s the way it went then.”) and screams at the young men speeding by on electric scooters, using the exact same phrases Jack himself used at the beginning of the film (“When is the last time you ever saw one of those bastards obey a stop sign?”). The look on Jack’s face says it all: This miserable man will be Jack’s future in 30 years’ time… unless Jack makes a change in his life.

So Jack chooses to change. He makes a promise to his wife that he’s going to do the work to get a handle on his anger so that it won’t affect their children and their lives anymore. And he does: He goes to therapy. When a neighbor makes a condescending comment, he doesn’t start a fight—he lets it go. Burr doesn’t compromise all of his values for the movie’s message. In the end, Jack sends his son to public school “where they still play tackle football, and you can pick your kids up whenever the fuck you want.”

But the acknowledgment of his semi-autobiographical character’s flaws is nonetheless a surprisingly astute display of emotional maturity and self-reflection. Burr clearly knows his audience: The quick-to-anger, libertarian, anti-woke crowd. He could have pandered to them. He could have preached to the choir about everything wrong with today’s generation of young, liberal parents. It probably would have been a hit. Instead, he took a step back and asserted that he, and his fans, are not blameless in their dissatisfaction with the world.

It’s not the first time Burr has done something like this, of course. He addressed the difference between his on-stage persona and real-life personality, as well as his inspiration to go to therapy for his anger issues, in a 2022 Hollywood Reporter feature. “People think, like, I’m just walking around fuming, or they’ll watch my act and take it literally,” Burr said. “I’m not going to lie. Somebody pisses me off, I’ll carry it for like three days. But now I squash shit rather than carry it [longer]. Otherwise, I’ll find myself driving down the street, having an argument with somebody from three decades ago.”