WE’RE THE MILLERS (Rawson Marshall Thurber). 110 minutes. Now playing. For venues and times, see Movies, page 58. Rating: NN
We’re The Millers is what happens when a studio takes a reasonably interesting premise and does as little as possible with it.
Jason Sudeikis plays a low-level drug dealer charged with driving a load of pot over the Mexican border into the U.S. To pull it off, he hits on the idea of posing as a suburban dad and renting an RV – which requires recruiting a family. Fortunately, he knows a stripper (Jennifer Aniston), a runaway (Emma Roberts) and a weird teenager (Will Poulter), all of whom are just mercenary enough to join him.
Stuff happens, none of it particularly funny – a real disappointment given the presence of director Rawson Marshall Thurber, who encouraged his talented cast to run free with a goofy concept in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. We’re The Millers just uses a lot of stiff, repetitive humour in which prickly jerks have to pretend to be normal while unconsciously bonding as a family in spite of their anti-social personalities.
There are flashes of a weirder, funnier movie in turns by Ken Marino as Aniston’s chipper strip club boss and Ed Helms as the enthusiastically amoral drug lord who enlists Sudeikis on his border run. But you just can’t shake the feeling that everyone else is only here for the money.
