Rose O’Reilly: Jennifer Aniston
Kenny Rossmore: Will Poulter
Casey Mathis: Emma Roberts
Brad Gurdlinger: Ed Helms
Don Fitzgerald: Nick Offerman
Edie Fitzgerald: Kathryn Hahn
Melissa Fitzgerald: Molly Quinn
Warner Bros. Pictures and
New Line Cinema present a film directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. Written by
Bob Fisher & Steve Faber and Sean Anders & John Morris. Running time:
110 min. Rated R (for crude sexual content, pervasive language, drug content,
and brief graphic nudity).
There’s an old entertainment
adage that states that comedy is hard. It’s always assumed that means it’s hard
to perform, or direct, or just pull off in general. In my acting days—which
hopefully aren’t entirely behind me—I found comedy to be rather easy to pull
off. It came naturally to me. I was good at acting goofy, and it didn’t always
require those “real” emotions that, for me were always a little harder to
connect with inside. I suppose this is also the case for many comedic actors,
most especially actors like the ones that inhabit the cast of the movie “We’re
the Millers”.
No, what is so hard about
comedy is getting critics to admit they liked it. For some reason critics have
a habit of looking for the deeper meanings in things, some sort of message to
take away from it all. There are some comedies that do that, but usually
comedies are just about making people laugh. As long as you’re willing to
endure some loss of your usual comfort zone, “We’re the Millers” delivers on
the laughs. I laughed. I don’t understand how most critics didn’t.
“We’re the Millers” starts
off with David Clark, a low level drug dealer who caters mostly to the
specialty marijuana market in the greater Denver area. He deals to stay at home
moms, business men, coffee house regulars… you know, the “Weeds” market. He’s
unassuming, and nice enough about it, although he doesn’t really seem to like
people much. Perhaps that’s why he never settled into a regular nine to five
career.
His neighbor is a stripper,
Rose. Not her real name. He likes her, but her career seems to have given her
even less of an appreciation for other people than David has. There’s a kid,
Kenny, in their apartment building whose parents when out drinking and haven’t
come back yet. They went out two weeks ago. One night Kenny decides to play
hero to a homeless girl in distress at the hands of some unsavory types across
the street. The girl is Casey. Realizing that Kenny has bit off more than he can
chew, David intervenes and ends up being robbed by the thugs. This is a problem
because he owed his supplier almost $50,000 from the sales of his current batch
of weed. Thus David graduates from drug dealer to drug smuggler.
To make up for his missing
money David agrees to go to Mexico to pick up a shipment and bring it across
the boarder. Seeing an RV get out of a traffic violation one day he realizes a
family road trip is the perfect cover for drug smuggling. He recruits Rose to
be his wife and Kenny and Casey to be their kids for the strangest family road
trip anyone’s ever taken.
SNL’s Jason Sudeikis makes
for a very natural leading comedian as David. He rolls his everyman qualities
into a nice parody of the patriarchal figure of a fake family. His contrasting down
to Earth drug dealer persona makes it easy for him to bring out the anxiety of
trying to head a group of people through a stressful situation. Jennifer
Aniston is also fairly laid back as Rose. She’s as natural in her soccer mom
get up as she is in her skimpy stripper lingerie. Her ability to bring everyone
back to reality works in her character’s favor.
Will Poulter, who was the
only interesting thing about “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn
Trader”, is the break out star of the movie as Kenny. He has the most shocking
moment of the movie which involves Hitchcock’s theory that letting the audience
know there is a bomb under the table that may explode is more effective than
just having that bomb explode. The bomb in this case is a spider and the
eventual explosion will cause you to look away despite how quickly the film’s
editor cuts away. Emma Roberts, as Casey, proves that a teenage girl with a
family has the same basic life outlook as a homeless person—the people who know
her can never understand her situation and life can’t get any worse.
The supporting cast adds as
much joy to the proceedings as the main cast. Ed Helms plays David’s
untraditional drug supplier kingpin. He buys a killer whale because he’s not
into cars. Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn play another vacationing couple RVing
with their cute daughter, Molly Quinn of “Castle”. They open the film up to
some very uncomfortable situations, involving in order, a baby, Pictionary, and
swinging. And a carnival employee (Mark L. Young) brings attention to some
people’s annoying speech patterns. ‘Know what I’m sayin’?
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