We’re the Millers is about transformation. The characters transform both in appearance and attitude and as the film moves forward they begin to adopt the characteristics of their false personalities. Now you would think that from those first two sentences this is a deeper movie than you would expect. It really isn’t. It is a film full of dirty language, ginormous spider-bitten balls and Jennifer Aniston as a stripper. It is also one of the funniest movie of the year so far.
Jason Sudeikis plays David Clark, a drug dealer that is living the perfect lazy life until a group of thugs rob all of his stock and cash. His boss (Ed Helms) is none too pleased with this and makes a deal with David that he will travel to Mexico and pick up some pot and transport it back across the border. After a run-in with a group of New York tourists, David realizes that the easiest way to make it across the border and back is to look like the prototypical all-American family.
He recruits his stripper neighbor (Aniston), who is on her last leg and being evicted from her apartment to play his wife, a homeless gutter-punk (Emma Roberts) to be his daughter and Kenny (Will Poulter), a naive kid in his complex to play his son. Once they make their way to Mexico they find that the “smidge” of pot is, in actuality, 2 tons and has been neatly stacked in every crevice of their RV. The little hitch in the giddy-up is that David’s boss sent him to actually steal drugs out from under a Mexican drug lord and now they are being chased by the kingpin and his rather menacing 7-foot tall henchman. Along the way they meet up with another RV family, the Fitzgeralds. Don (Nick Offerman), Edie (Kathryn Hahn) and their daughter interweave themselves throughout the movie and provide some of the funniest banter along the way. They are a godsend during middle of the film when normally you would expect a lull in pacing or jokes because the back and forth between the families keep things moving until the plot picks back up.
We’re the Millers does fall into a lot of the normal comedy trappings. The shy kid finds a girl he likes and before he can make a move she catches him making out with with his “mom” and “sister”. OK, maybe not the “normal” comedy trappings, but there are more than a few moments in the movie that we have seen in a hundred comedies before. The main characters fall for each other, the punk girl realizes that having a family is what she actually wants, etc. Luckily this does not trip up the movie. When the jokes are perfectly placed and the delivery is spot on it can overcome the normality of the plot.
When it comes down to it, We’re the Millers is funny. It is actually damn funny. It may not change your life like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but you will laugh heartily a lot. Where else will you get to see Eustace from The Chronicles of Narnia show off his giant spider venom filled ball sack, Ron Swanson finger bang someone’s ear and Jennifer Aniston strip to her undies and get wet like the scene in Flashdance?
Exactly.
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