I had planned to see Turbo last night. Turbo (near as I can tell) is about a speedy cartoon snail voiced by Van Wilder. And I was excited, because I was prettttttttty certain I was gonna hate it, and ripping into movies that deserve it makes me almost as happy as beer.
But, the thing about seeing movies at Galaxy Highland 10 (The People's Theater) is that sometimes they'll throw you a curveball like a busted a projector. The 9:30 Turbo was cancelled. Fortunately on Tuesdays, The People's Theater will show advance screenings of movies for the next weekend! That's how I ended up seeing...
...last night. And ya know, it really could have been worse.
We're the Millers is a road trip action comedy about a small time drug dealer who assembles a fake family to mule an RV full of weed across the Mexican boarder. It's just like RV, but with *drugs*!
This is a movie deliberately trafficking in obvious jokes. Jennifer Aniston is a stripper pretending to be a mom! There's an 18 year-old dorky virgin! A spider bites his nuts! It should be terrible. Watching the trailer made me want it to be terrible. And yet somehow, it really isn't.
Don't get me wrong; there are problems. The last 20+ minutes of the movie are a clinic in "Who Gives a Fuck?" Ron Swanson is wasted in the roll of a nerdy DEA agent-turned swinger. Ed Helms' d-bag drug king pin just isn't all that funny. But the Miller family makes We're the Millers (sort of) work.
Jason Sudeikis deserves a lot of the credit for that. Truly being able to carry a movie is a rare quality, and he's more than capable. The script doesn't give him a ton to work with; his character, David Clarke, vacillates between semi-admirable slacker and morally vacant shit weasel with little to no reason several times throughout the story. His actions aren't always believable, but you do want to watch.
The rest of the family--Aniston, Emma Roberts, and whoever the fuck this is--all have their moments, the latter most especially. If any one character embodies We're the Millers, it's him. He's a walking caricature of virginal wasteland, a hopeless loser you've seen in every comedy featuring a teenager since the god damn Jazz Singer, and he's really funny just the same. I hate him for it. STOP MAKING ME LAUGH AT CHEAP JOKES.
Anyway, We're the Millers is OK. It's not great. It might not be worth seeing in a theater. But it's not gonna back-alley rape your soul like The Love Guru, either.
Directed By: Rawson Marshall Thurber (better known as "the guy who did Dodgeball")
Starring: Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Nancy Drew, Will Poulter
You Should see it if: You wanna see Jennifer Aniston do a strip tease and/or laugh at dick jokes. Those do happen here.
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