The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

(2009)

Directed by

Neal Brennan

Review by Todd Plucknett

Ok, I am writing this as the equivalent to what Terry did with my Quantum of Solace review, referencing and criticizing most of the incorrect points in his review.

Simply put, The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard does not deliver the goods. Neal Brennan’s film gathers together a nice ensemble cast with some of the funniest people in entertainment, yet it somehow fails to bring laughs, and given the genre and minute intelligence the film has, that is a huge problem. I was mildly encouraged by Terry’s review (though I do not agree with his rating system at all) and by a few semi-positive reviews from critics, yet I still expected that the movie was going to blow. I was correct…again. That is three times this year that a comedy has failed that I saw coming (the others being The Hangover and Bruno). They should have just added a third subtitle to the film, “Fails Hard.”

The Goods is about Selleck Motors, a small car dealership that is about to go under. The owner Ben Selleck (James Brolin) decides to hire Don “The Goods” Ready (Jeremy Piven) and his team of offbeat car-selling specialists (Ving Rhames, Kathryn Hahn, and David Koechner) to help him out for the 4^th of July Weekend sale to try to save the business. While they are selling a bunch of cars and building steady business, the dealership gets into a battle with fellow car dealer Stu Harding (Alan Thicke) and his son (Ed Helms), making a deal that they have to sell every car on the lot to stick around.

The first problem with The Goods is that it has no originality to it. In Terry’s review, he references that the film is a throwback to a ‘90s comedy. Ok, I guess I can see that. That was the age of the Farrelly brothers, two filmmakers who made their living by creating hilarious wacky comedies like Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary (calling it second-rate Farrelly brothers is giving it too much credit, however). Since then, the genre has changed. With Apatow and his clan dominating the comedic world with laugh-out-loud comedies with heart, a new standard has been set. This film does not even bother with heart or anything serious; it just tries to pack as much profanity and strip club scenes into the movie as possible. None of which is particularly funny. So when Terry said that Apatow has robbed bad comedies like this from getting their due, he should have said that it helped the genre become more respectable by making this kind of film an outcast, not the norm. It’s the same reason why G.I.Joe failed in the comic book/superhero genre. Maybe 10-15 years ago these movies may have stood a chance, but now, they are just completely irrelevant.

The acting in the film is tolerable. Jeremy Piven gives it his all. We all know that he is funny, but his character is just such a cliché that his laughs are limited. Ving Rhames is the funniest, mainly because he is playing himself, and the part is written for him to do so. All those awkward moments with him on screen provided the slightest amount of light in this otherwise dead comedy. Kathryn Hahn has some comedic talent, but she really has nothing to work with here. David Koechner does nothing new. He is like the Randy Quaid of comedy nowadays. James Brolin is fine. Alan Thicke seemed out of place. The cop from The Hangover was terrible for the second time this summer. Ken Jeong should have called it quits after Knocked Up. Charles Napier was awful and annoying. I actually liked Jordana Spiro, though. She was one of the only believable characters in the film. The funniest actors are Ed Helms and Craig Robinson, but their parts are so awfully-written, that not even they can garner any quality laughs. Will Ferrell’s small part was funny the first time, but the second two were just irritating. There were times when the actors knew that the writing was so awful that they were not even trying to be funny. They looked bored, just like I did in the theater, constantly looking at my watch and frustrated over the longest 90 minutes of the year outside of Bruno.

The Goods has been kicked to the curb by most critics, and deservingly so. Where was I supposed to laugh here anyway? I tried to turn off my brain, but hearing women and old men cursing every time they are on screen is not funny alone. It needs to be in context. The lack of any sort of intelligence ended up taking away from the film, even though it was striving to be a mindless comedy. There were times that I thought about laughing at some ironic or quirky moments, but when you have to think before you laugh at a gag, that is never a good sign. And what was up with that post-credits nonsense? That was a punishment for staying through the credits, not an Easter egg. Afterwards, I sat there laughing my ass off with the person I was with. That cringe-inducing end just defined the entire movie that I just watched. At least in the worst movie of the year Bruno it ended on a funny note. This ended in pure torture. Granted, this is a better film than Bruno if for no other reason than that it had no aspirations, and it still gathered more laughs. No one should be subjected to watching either, however.

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