We’re the Millers

were-the-millers-poster

Release date: August 7, 2013
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Story by: Bob Fisher, Steve Faber
Screenplay by: Bob Fisher, Steve Faber, Sean Anders, John Morris
Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Will Poulter, Emma Roberts, Ed Helms, Nick Offerman, Kathryn Hahn, Molly C. Quinn, Luis Guzman

Nobody on this site wants to watch comedies with Jennifer Aniston — at least not any longer. Fine. You got me there, feeding me this trailer in a rare cinema outing where I actually chuckled at Will Poulter singing to TLC’s Waterfalls [MV].

I’m rather impartial with Thurber’s list of films under his belt, and We’re the Millers doesn’t seem to change a thing. In here, we got Sudeikis… who’s actually the “star” of the film — despite Aniston taking lead credit — playing David, a man boy living the life of a hip drug dealer. He’s got fancy products, loads of cash stashed in his rather pretty fancy apartment and takes your order via his iPhone. Queue product placement. When David runs into an old college pal he barely remembers, who already has a family with kids and living the “American white picket fence dream,” he is reminded that nobody would care if he dropped dead, but he seems unfazed by this.

After trying to collect a $400USD debt from the now ex-boyfriend of his sexy stripper of a neighbor,  Rose (Aniston), David runs into his boy-next-door neighbor Kenny (Poulter) who is the dork and clumsy guy who tries to be the knight in shining armor of Casey (Roberts), who’s being mugged down the street. After Kenny reveals David is a dealer, and the thugs sack his place leaving David with nothing, he is coaxed by his boss, Brad Gurdlinger (Helms), to smuggle “some” merchandise across the border with the pretense of working for some Pablo Chacon.

To avoid being detected at the border, David enlists this gang of sarcastic folk — except for Kenny who volunteers out of the goodness of his virgin heart — to go to Mexico pretending to be a family, and smuggle the drugs out of it for money. Of course, sh!t happens in this R-rated National Lampoon’s Vacation.

We’re the Millers is… mostly painless. Except for the times it feels like it drags, and the road back to America seems so long. I thought I had a chance to laugh a lot more with Will Poulter’s character, but most of his highlights were already on the trailers. But if you really want to enjoy his talent to the fullest, you should check him out on Son of Rambow. Whereas Emma Roberts seems palatable, her character seemed almost like an extension to Aniston, who surprisingly doesn’t make you cringe. Neither her nor Sudeikis steal anyone’s thunder, though, they’re better when they’re together with the whole family… or better when they’re alone with the Fitzgeralds (Offerman and Hahn). In fact, some of the most off-beat things Hahn said during these were about the only things that had me bursting out  a ‘what?‘ instead of just chuckling.

Plenty of dick moves all around from Helms to Sudeikis and from Sudeikis towards everyone — which gets a little exasperating — especially towards Poulter’s character who really took all the punch of the jokes. Poor Kenny.

I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would. There.

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

amy

YAM Magazine editor, photographer, blogger, translator and part-time web designer. Film junkie, music junkie… and lately series (a.k.a. TV) junkie.

4 Responses

  1. Rodrigo says:

    I have two things to ask about this film.

    1) I heard about a meta joke related to Aniston and Friends. How did that fared?

    2) Why is the Latinamerican title different from the original? It’s “¿Quién *&$%! son los Miller?” (Who the **** are the Millers?). Spain’s translation is a literal one. For non-spanish titles, Portugal/Sweden has “Family Trip”, France has “The Millers, a family on weed”. Dunno why I paid attention to this aspect in particular, but I did. Lol.

    • amy says:

      @Rodrigo, the FRIENDS joke was a credit outtake, so it doesn’t take part of the actual storyline. It was heehee cute kinda funny.

      I suppose “Somos los Millers” doesn’t give away the actual content of the film, while the Latin American does — it is a R-rated film. Remember Spaniards use a lot more swear words when speaking, so it might be just regular talking for them LOL – I’m telling you I’m still SHOCKED HP3 uses the word “mierda” .

      I think the Chinese title was also The Miller Family or something…

      • Rodrigo says:

        @amy, Saw this one days ago because I was bored. Dunno if it was low expectations, but I liked the film and laughed with it. While I agree with your assessment of the Fitzgeralds, the “Fuck off, real-life Flanders” line from Sudeikis made me laugh out loud and got stuck in my head way more than it should have.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.