Screwball heist comedy steals some laughs
Masterminds
(out of 4) Starring Zach Galifianakis, Owen Wilson, Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudeikis, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones. Directed by Jared Hess. 95 minutes. Opens Friday at major theatres. PG
“Based on a true story” is not the best way to identify a Jared Hess movie, least of all one as screwball as Masterminds.
The Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre director maintains a keen sense of the absurd and zero devotion to boring facts. So while Masterminds is based on the real 1997 heist of $17 million (U.S.) from a Loomis Fargo bank vault in Charlotte, N.C., and the names of the thieves are the same, to label something this loony a true story is like calling Cheez Whiz actual cheese.
We should also break down the “action comedy” label the film is being marketed under.
There’s not a whole lot of action, apart from pratfalls by robbery pawn David Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis, assuming a role Jim Carrey was originally cast for).
Ghantt is a doofus armoured car driver with a Prince Valiant hairdo who dreams of running away to Mexico with his co-worker crush Kelly Campbell (Kristen Wiig).
As for comedy, that’s equally unsteady, since Hess and his three scripters rely more on the improv skills of an impressive cast than on anything resembling jokes or a credible story. And what a cast! Wiig is joined by Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, which makes this three-quarters of the female Ghostbusters crew. (They filmed Masterminds, left on the shelf during recent bankruptcy woes for producer Relativity Studios, before teaming with Melissa McCarthy for this past summer’s reboot of the spook-chasing franchise.)
Add Owen Wilson as the bullying heist leader (the “masterminds” title is clearly ironic for all concerned), Jason Sudeikis as a weird hit man and Comedy Central’s Jon Daly as a deadpan FBI detective and you’ve got the raw ensemble material of what could have been a really funny movie.
Which Masterminds occasionally is, although the humour seems to happen more by accident than by design. Such as when Wilson is explaining to Wiig how Mexican prisons might be a hellhole, but at least they serve real Mexican food in them, not the fake crap you get in America.
Or when McKinnon and Galifianakis are posing for engagement photos — their characters are supposed to be getting married — and they use the occasion to freestyle a series of goofball moves.
Somehow in all of this, the $17 million actually gets stolen and the perps predictably do all the wrong things with the money, with one another and with the police in the U.S. and Mexico who are sort of hot on their tails.
But that hardly matters. The greater heist is pulling a few decent laughs out of a serious news story and cockamamie screenplay.