Twitter Plot Summary: Small time drug dealer David Clark is asked to smuggle marijuana into the US from Mexico, with support from a fake family.
Genre: Comedy/Crime
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Key Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, Will Poulter, Emma Roberts, Ed Helms, Nick Offerman, Kathryn Hahn, Molly Quinn, Tomer Sisley, Matthew Willig, Luis Guzman.
Five Point Summary:
1. Drug dealer needs to sneak down into Mexico? Hey, I’ve got a great idea lads…
2. Swinging. In the loosest possible sense.
3. Jennifer Aniston proving she’s a stripper. You’ve seen it in the trailer.
4. Gross out humour. I see. Amusing, but necessary? No.
5. There’s the payoff you were expecting. Let’s all go home in an orderly fashion.
The big problem these days seems to be that trailers often give away absolutely everything about a film. By the time you get chance to see the film, you’ve already seen all of the bits worthy of your time and money so more often than not it does render your viewing a slightly moot point. The point of the trailer is to tease the film, not give the whole thing away. That’s probably going to expand into a full-on spleen venting post at some point in the future, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Suffice to say, if you’ve seen a trailer for We’re The Millers, you’ve got the whole film in a nutshell.
Sudeikis plays David Clark, a relatively small time drug dealer who is asked by drug lord Brad Gurlinger (a stupidly OTT/camp Ed Helms) to head down to Mexico, pick up a “smidge” of pot and smuggle it back over the border. Of course, as you will have seen from the trailer, it doesn’t all go to plan and on the way back the “Millers” as the faux family of David, neighbour/stripper Rose (Aniston) and kids Kenny (Poulter, another neighbour) and Casey (Roberts, homeless girl) call themselves, have to negotiate angry drug dealers, venomous spiders, a stereotypical family on holiday (helmed by the fabulous Nick Offerman) and a carnival where one of the staff has no regrets about getting his tattoo that says “no ragrets.” You know what I’m saying?
We’ve seen this story time and time again, it’s just the characters and the humorous incidents that take place that are any different. After their initial dislike of each other the four of them start to bond and form a surrogate family. Obviously with a few speed bumps along the way, because otherwise there would be little dramatic tension to the story. With this in mind you can settle down and enjoy the jokes as they dutifully trot them out as we build to that inevitable ending. The laughs are quite numerous but again, if you’ve seen the trailer then they’ve already given away most of the best gags. The best non-spoilt joke, or series of jokes, comes in the opening five minutes where David meets one of his old school friends. I won’t dip into spoiler territory because otherwise there’s zero point in you watching the film, but they place heavy emphasis on the fact the school friend has settled down and has two kids whereas David is still single and has freedom to do as he likes. Of course this being the movies David would obviously like to settle down but he has yet to find the right woman.
Much of the pre-release promotion has gone to great lengths to pull in as many men as possible by flaunting Jennifer Aniston’s striptease segment. Again, there’s very little more to it in the film that’s not already been shown in the trailer, so if you liked those segments then you’ll like them equally as much in the film. Villain Pablo Chacon (Sisley) is mostly toothless, as is henchman One Eye (Willig), which is a shame because there was a lot more room for jokes with these two characters. Chacon is possibly the blandest drug dealing villain in recent cinema history, existing just to chase the surrogate family from A to B. It’s a pity, but there’s plenty of jokes to go round for everybody else and should at least prove to be moderately entertaining for the majority of the cinema going audience.
Favourite scene: Seeing as it wasn’t spoiled by the trailer, the interaction between David and his old school friend – sets up the story and David’s character perfectly.
Quote: “What the hell is that?” “That’s an Orca. I make a lot of money.”
Silly Moment: After the spider bite, we see erm… everything in great detail. Gross out humour at its finest.
Score: 3/5
