August 7th : We’re the Millers
Drug dealer David (Jason Sudeikis) is asked by a wealthy client (Ed Helms) to pick up marijuana from Mexico, for which he’ll be paid $100,000. Realizing that one man attempting to get through customs all by himself is too suspicious, he hires a stripper (Jennifer Aniston) and recruits two local kids, a runaway teen girl (Emma Roberts) and a virgin teenage boy (Will Poulter) to portray a bogus family, the Millers, so as to not arouse suspicion while crossing the border. But the “family” runs into hilarity when it is discovered that the marijuana David was supposed to return to the States was taken from a high-powered Mexican drug lord.
Production began in Wilmington, North Carolina on July 23, 2012. Majority of the production was filmed in North Carolina and New Mexico. It is scheduled to be presented during the 2013 Traverse City Film Festival and also during the Locarno International Film Festival. The film was in development for a few years at New Line. In 2006, the film was announced with Steve Buscemi as the pot dealer, with Will Arnett in another role, but no further development was made. In April 2012, various news media broke the news that Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis were in talks to star in the film. The film added Emma Roberts, Will Poulter, Ed Helms and Kathryn Hahn in July.
{loadposition tickers}
Sudeikis plays Dave Clark, a low-level dope dealer who seems to have successfully avoided growing up by perpetually acting like a college kid. Now solidly in his 30s, he’s an easy mark for some kids who roll him one night, stealing his stash.His supplier (Ed Helms, going goofy-dark) makes Dave work off what he owes by driving to Mexico to bring back a huge delivery of weed through customs. Since he has an RV to carry it, Dave has to fill the ride with humans to provide cover. So he rounds up a rogues gallery of neighbors in his apartment building and turns them into a fake family, with stripper Rose (Aniston) as his wife, and a dork and a runaway (Will Poulter, Emma Roberts) as their kids.Family vacations are bad enough to begin with, but Dave has no idea how much this phony one will get on his nerves.The movie gets on ours, eventually.
Though it sometimes can outrun gags you see coming a mile away (who’d have guessed this dysfunctional “family” would squabble like a real one? Or that they’d develop a depth of feeling for each other?), the trip gets irritating.A few supporting performances shine, including Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn as two would-be-swingin’ vacationers, and Roberts, whose turn as a sneery punkette is enjoyably tossed-off. And there are fun small touches to push through, like a clueless Dave reading a Wikipedia entry on “drug smuggling” on his iPhone. Aniston seems a little beyond this stuff. She was similarly too willing to bust loose in “Wanderlust,” “The Bounty Hunter” and “Horrible Bosses.” While she’s best when off-kilter (“The Good Girl” and “Office Space” remain her big-screen high points), “Millers” uses her skill at being petulant-proud toward an edge that’s not there.
Whereas the mellow Sudeikis doesn’t need to go far to find his inner mock-slime, Aniston once and forever America’s favorite ex-girlfriend is doing the movie equivalent of a pole dance after too many drinks. She has about one and a half scenes of stripper action, and while she looks great, the self-parody kills the fun.
{jcomments on}
