I gotta be honest with you people out there,
most of whom I don't know even though I still consider you
close and personal friends… 'We're The Millers' is the one
film in the summer of 2013, at least of the major releases,
that hasn't let me down. I mean I've seen most of them…
'Wolverine', 'Iron Man 3', 'Pacific Rim', 'WWZ', 'The Worlds
End' et. al… and while I'm not saying 'We're The Millers' was
better than those movies… any of those movies… it fulfilled
its promise, at least as far as I'm concerned, more than any
of those other movies did.
Jason Sudekis is low level pot dealer David Clark and David
doesn't have much going on in his life as far as
ambition. He sells pot and watches funny videos on the
internet. That's pretty much it. Unfortunately on
this particular day, due to the meddling of the sweet but
borderline retarded character of Kenny (Will Poulter), David
is robbed of his drugs and a bunch of loot by some
thugs. We could ask why David was carting around damn
near sixty grand in his back pack, but we won't ask that.
David's boss, Brad Gurdlinger (Ed Helms), needs his money like
yesterday. David doesn't have his money. So Brad
makes him a deal… go down to Mexico, pick up some contraband
and import it back to the U.S. Easy. The thing is
David's long hair and bad attitude and mid 80's styled razor
stubble isn't going to get him across the border and back with
a RV full of contraband. Then the light goes on!
Dave figures he should hire Rose (Jennifer Anniston), the
stripper with the heart of semi-tarnished gold to pose as his
wife, foul-mouthed runaway Casey (Emma Roberts) to play his
daughter and the afore mentioned Will to play his son, because
nobody looks twice at goofy families going in and out of
Mexico. I guess. I wouldn't know this for a fact,
but for the sake of this movies main premise, I'm going to buy
into that.
So our fake family loads up the RV and makes
it into Mexico. They go into the drug compound, get the
drugs and with some tension head back to the border.
Along the way they meet some fellow friendly RV-ers in Don
(Nick Offerman), his wife Edie (Kathryn Hahn) and their
daughter Melissa (Molly C. Quinn) who figure quite prominently
in the comedy to come. Our fake family does make it
across the border, but there is trouble, say from the dealer
the drugs they unknowingly stole from (Tomer Sisley) wanting
his drugs back. And of course, where would the fun be if
the RV didn't break down? Of course it breaks down
silly! This gives our fake family a chance to bond like
a real, live, non-drug smuggling family, and it gives us a
golden opportunity for even more comedy.
Amidst the comedic elements and drug smuggling, will David
realize the gift he's given? That making the big 'score'
isn't nearly as important as family, even if you've had this
family for a total of about 36 hours and you've been dealing
drugs practically your entire life? What do you think?
Let us get one thing straight about 'We're the Millers' right
off the bat. As a film… we gotta say… it's not a very
good one. I've used this example before but a 'good'
film usually begins with a solid concept, which this movie
directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber certainly has, followed by
a logical narrative, which 'We're The Millers' certainly does
NOT have. As a logical comedy, it's pretty poor.
As comic thriller, it's damned awful. As a tale of moral
redemption, it's almost criminal.
Good. We've got that out of the way. Because I
laughed during 'We're The Millers' almost from start to
finish. Yes, it's tasteless and crass and low brow most
of the time, but I don't believe it's tasteless and crass and
low brow just for the sake of being tasteless. The comic
elements actually build upon itself so that as the movie plays
on, it only gets funnier. It's not a one joke
movie. And while a lot of the comedy was low brow, it
wasn't so low brow that I felt bad
about laughing at it. I would feel bad if I had laughed
during the bit about the kid being bit on the nutsack by a
poisonous spider, but that wasn't funny to me so there was
nothing to feel bad about.
I will admit that I haven't been the biggest fan of the comedy
of Jason Sudekis and his previous films, but his machine gun
style worked here. Jennifer Anniston as the stripper who
doesn't get naked gave us a variation of that thing she
usually does, but that worked here as well. I was
somewhat disappointed that international star Tomer Sisley, an
actor whose French films I am a big fan of, was completely
wasted in throwaway role, but then this does fall under the
banner of why this movie was such a terrible comic
thriller.
'We're The Millers' did not let me down. I didn't come
into this movie expecting a logical comedy, a decent comic
thriller or a tale of redemption that looked like it could
actually happen on the Planet Earth. I came in to
laugh. I left laughing. How can I criticize that?
