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Saturday, September 7, 2013

We're The Millers (2013)

We're The Millers
We're The Millers
starts out pretty strong and then _____. It flattens out. A good cast, trying their best, can't make up for a script that begins to die the minute the premise (that thing the trailer uses to get people to see the movie) starts in the second act. What's left is a disappointment.

Jason Sudeikis is David, a drug dealer who is robbed of cash he needs to pay off his supplier (Ed Helms). To erase the debt, Helms arranges for Sudeikis to go to Mexico, and come back with a "smidge, smidge and a half" of marijuana. To cross the border inconspicuously Sudeikis decides to have two of his neighbors, a stripper played by Jennifer Aniston and an eighteen-year-old kid played by Will Poulter, and a homeless girl played by Emma Roberts, pose as a typical American family.

Once they get into Mexico, the terms of the deal become apparent. According to Helms a smidge is roughly a couple hundred bags of weed, enough to fill every hiding spot on a giant RV. Of course, nothing goes as planned and things get complicated when the family runs into a DEA agent, his wife, and their eighteen-year-old daughter (Nick Offerman, Kathryn Hahn, and Molly Quinn, respectively). They also run into other drug dealers who have a problem with the arrangement.

Focus on Molly Quinn and the problems with the movie become clear. It's half-baked. Her role in the film is strictly to hook up with Poulter's character. We know almost nothing about her outside of what her parents are like, the two of them have virtually no scenes together, and in the end Poulter wins her over because that's his major arc in the film. She doesn't get an arc in this movie, but she's used to make Poulter look like a nerd, a freak, and in the end a hero.

The rest of the movie has the "family" getting to know each other in some admittedly sweet scenes, and getting out of a few ridiculous jams. Unfortunately, this doesn't make up for when characters, mainly Sudeikis, have to behave like assholes just because the screenwriters throw another curveball to pad the movie.

In the end, the performances do save this movie. I believed all the actors involved liked working with each other, which is the only reason why this movie may be worth watching. They're all funny in it, but they have only themselves to thank for that.


2.5/5

But creating a meme template earns it another .25/5

I'm keeping a copy right here for convenience.

We're The Meme
The staying power of We're The Millers | Copyright 2013 Warner Brothers

Update: Also, this isn't Sudeikis at his toxic best. That's Colossal. His performance, and the writing around it, are phenomenal. 

We're The Millers is a Warner Brothers film directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber

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