2013 comedy
Rating: 9/20 (Jen: 13/20)
Plot: After his stash is stolen, drug-dealing loser David is forced to go to Mexico to smuggle a gargantuan amount of marijuana across the border so that his drug boss doesn’t kill him. With a neighbor kid, a homeless girl, and a stripper who lives in his building, he travels incognito as the titular family in a recreational vehicle. Then: comedy!
These are very difficult-to-like characters (I mean, one is a virgin! And he’s weird looking!) played by actors and actresses willing to demean themselves to be about half as funny as they think they are. Jennifer Aniston, at this stage in her career, does not have to play a stripper and have a lengthy scene where she disrobes, a scene that doesn’t–at least logically–move the plot along and isn’t funny at all. A later scene involving a lot of kissing will also make you question Aniston’s choices. Will Poulter plays the virgin, creepily, and he gets a nice moment where he drops his pants and flashes fake genitalia. The clumsiness with how that scene is shot makes it seem like director Rawson Marshall Thurber (Rawson?) went into this with the attitude that he was going to shockingly show us a boy’s genitals and didn’t really need to worry about the technical side of things. That scene will be shown in Poulter’s “in memoriam” thing on the awards shows when he dies. Emma Roberts is barely noticeable. And I’m surprised Jason Sudeikis, playing the really unlikable “dad” here, isn’t hit in the nuts repeatedly. It’s that kind of movie, the kind that starts with a series of Internet memes–double-rainbow guy, etc.–and is stuffed with modern references that nobody will even understand in ten years. I hate when comedies give themselves a very short shelf life. Ed Helms is another actor who needs to start making better decisions because his likability is about to expire if it hasn’t happened already. Not even Nick Offerman and Nick Offerman’s mustache can save this. I really hated this movie and am embarrassed that I laughed a couple times.
