Film satirizes the American dream
Sudeikis, Aniston and company turn the typical family comedy on its head
Jennifer Aniston jiggles. Jason Sudeikis giggles and Ed Helms gets nasty in We’re the Millers, a new comedy that tries to balance old- fashioned family values with 21st century crassness.
Directed by Dodgeball director Rawson Marshall Thurber, this movie about a middle- aged drug dealer forced to explore the results of his half- baked decisions might seem like something better suited to Adam Sandler or Seth Rogen, but Thurber gets added mileage by turning this raunchy road movie into a quiet critique of mainstream, whitebread, Costco- shopping, Dockerswearing, vaguely Christian America.
The socio- economic angle is front- loaded into the very setup as we meet David Clark ( Sudeikis), a pot dealer who sells his wares to suburban moms, affluent architects and old college buddies.
Sure, David’s peers entered the workforce and became typically productive members of society, but David never understood the nine- to- five lifestyle and carved out a beautiful existence for himself as an untethered, unambitious, single dude.
He’s accepted his ordinariness. It’s safe and easy. But when his young neighbour ( Will Poulter) decides to defend a street urchin’s ( Emma Roberts) honour, David gets rolled for all his cash.
He can’t pay his supplier ( Ed Helms), making him rather open to all sorts of suggestions regarding compensation. The man holding his IOU tells him the debt will be forgiven if he goes to Mexico, picks up a shipment of herb, and drives it back across the border.
David realizes it’s madness to drive a metric tonne of Mary Jane into the land of mandatory minimum drug sentencing, but he has no choice and tries to come up with a scenario that may deliver the goods, and his own safety.
After watching a police officer help a family of lost tourists, David hatches a plan to enlist a group of accomplices to play his relatives. A handful of scenes later, David is travelling to Nogales with “daughter” Casey ( Roberts), “son” Kenny ( Poulter) and his “wife” Rose ( Aniston).
Every one of them, outside of squeaky- clean Kenny, is a person on the margins. Casey is the surly street kid who clearly comes from an affluent family without love, Rose is a stripper with a heart of 14K- plated gold, and David is a man operating outside the big- box store of male identity.
Yet, when David dons the beige pants, golf shirt and submits to a dorky haircut, he suddenly looks like a man who knows the menu at Chuck E Cheese. And though society doesn’t reinforce it all that often, there’s something undeniably charming about a man behind the wheel of a minivan.
He’s surrendered all the brash revving of male youth in favour of a more responsible, and far more confident position on the road of life. It’s the reason why Chevy Chase was able to overcome his inherent smarm every time he went on a National Lampoon Vacation.
Wearing clothes from Mark’s Work Wearhouse makes you an Everyman, or in the case of our all- star stripper, an Everywoman.
Aniston looks so comfortable in her capris and white Keds that it’s almost too easy seeing her as the Kool- Aid mom. Yet, her character demands she be a fish out of water in anything without tassels, and this is where Aniston proves she has the depth and duality to convince us she’s a tough broad faking family niceties.
This is comedy, after all. If she were going for Jane Fonda in Klute, there’s no way it would have worked because Aniston is still shackled by her Friends persona. As a result, watching her work the pole feels particularly icky, despite her ample jiggle, because she looks like a soccer mom who’s been taking burlesque lessons after work.
For a nation struggling with issues of economic opportunity, We’re the Millers offers an interesting commentary on the endangered middle class by saying it may be little more than an illusion, a practical joke that’s become the punchline of the American dream.