We're The Millers Review

Coked out family road trip---Jason Sudekis, Jennifer Aniston, Will Poulter and Emma Roberts as a fake family of drug smugglers in We're The Millers

                                      To quote George Costanza in "Seinfeld"....We're The Millers is right in that meaty part of the curve...not showing off and not falling behind. It's a comedy with an enormous amount of chuckle worthy moments that never reaches its full potential. There is nothing that particularly stands out as hysterical but nothing particularly stands out as awful, either. The film is directed by Rawson Marshall Thunder...the guy who directed the surprisingly hilarious Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Similarly....the film is written by Bob Fisher and Steve Faber...the writers of the instant classic Wedding Crashers. The other two writers on the film (yes...there are two more) are Sean Anders and Josh Morris who did the surprisingly great comedy Hot Tub Time Machine and the very funny Sex Drive. When you put up this film against any four of those comedies...they will always make me laugh more than this comedy. That's not to say that We're The Millers isn't funny. As I previously mentioned...there are many chuckle worthy moments. It's just to say that it's strange how such a typical, by the numbers, predictable comedy took four incredibly gifted writers and an excellent director to make.

                                      The film follows David Clark (Jason Sudekis)....a pot dealer who's good at what he does and yet kind of secretly yearns to be part of a family. One day...David loses all of his pot and his drug kingpin boss (Ed Helms...oddly enough) offers him a way to pay back his debt by smuggling some marijuana across the border. David realizes that he would be caught right at the border if he went alone. Because family's dont get a second look...he hires a stripper (Jennifer Aniston), a dorky kid from his building (Will Poulter) and a drifter (Emma Roberts) to  pose as his fake family.

                                         This is a funny concept and I laughed consistently during the film. However, those moments are all in the back of my brain at this point. This is not only due to the fact that the film has a problem of being both detached from itself and too into itself but mostly because of how predictable it is. I'll give you a good example. The fake family meets u with a real family of campers. The dork immediately falls for the dorky daughter (Molly Quinn). The dad (Nick Offerman) is a DEA agent and the mom (Kathryn Hahn) is just there to be wacky. How do you think the fact that the dad is a DEA agent will play into the story? If you didn't already mumble the answer to yourself...you need to think a bit harder.

                                             What it comes down to with a film like this is did I laugh? The answer in this case is yes...multiple times. However, I didn't laugh as much as I think I should have. Sudekis and Aniston have great comic timing and their chemistry works. Offerman, as always, is great and makes me laugh and Poulter and Roberts make good supporting players. However, nothing stood out to me here. It's not that We're The Millers is a bad film. In fact....it's pretty damn good. It's just that I wish it was a bit better.
(3 and 1/2 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for crude sexual content, pervasive language, drug material and brief graphic nudity)