FILM REVIEW: WE'RE THE MILLERS

David Clark ( Jason Sudeikis) is a small-time drug dealer who earns a nice sideline in spending money by dealing grass to his neighbours and friends. But when he helps one of the teenage neighbours, Kenny (Will Poulter) is stopping a gang robing erstwhile street urchin Casey (Emma Roberts), he's then robbed himself of all his recent drug money - leaving him massively in debt to pathologically goofy druglord Brad Gurdlinger (Ed Helms).

Brad says he'll wipe out David's debt completely if he'll go to Mexico and collect a smidgen of dope he needs transported across the border. Well aware that he'll look incredibly suspect if he went alone, David comes up with a plan of disguise... he'll take his family with him. Only David doesn't have a family, so Kenny, Casey and his antagonistic neighbour and part-time stripper Rose O'Reilly (Jennifer Aniston) will have to do. Each promised a share of the profits, will this faux family be able to fool the authorities - and even more importantly not get themselves killed by criminals or each other in the process?

There’s something slightly unsettling about watching the news-story of two women facing half a lifetime of imprisonment in the darkest hellhole in Peru for allegedly trying to smuggle drugs …and then going to the cinema for a supposedly-riotous comedy about drug-smuggling. Yes, We’re the Millers tries to have its layer cake and eat it with a central character who – we’re reassured - usually only deals in small amounts of recreational grass and would never, ever sell to kids (because that would be wrong). Yet from the opening credits forwards this is a movie that already knows that it’s walking a fine line... and not one it does that gracefully.

The cast here are amiable enough,  cherry-picked from hit tv shows and comedy outings that mainstream America will recognise and with the addition of the UK’s Will Poulter – who at least is getting some diverse  and diverting work since he debuted back in Son of Rambow.

But the real problem here is not any amoral concept, but simply that there’s far too little decent material - and the few genuine chuckles there are, are stretched over a loose running time that needs to lose almost half an hour to keep things tight. The plot lurches off-road like the ‘family’s’ RV,  journeying between one film-extending contrivance and the next. Despite the supposedly dodgy language and situations that garnered it an adult ‘R’ rating in the US (and a ‘15’ in the UK), there’s less to offend here than an average episode of South Park, nor anything as clever.  Like the party drunk or the office joker, it’s rude and profane and cheeky and silly and amusing in small doses - but it almost feels like a much safer, mainstream comedy that has added the risqué material as a marketing move. It’s like a dated National Lampoon’s Vacation movie remastered for the 21st century, but still feeling tired - with more bongs than Big Ben and less boobs than promised.

And yes, there is also little doubt that a major marketing initiative revolves around the fact that at one point Jennifer Aniston strips down to underwear, gets soaking wet and performing a strip-tease and pole-dance. That alone was probably the pitch that got the movie green-lighted, but while it might stir your loins, the two minutes of bump and grind probably won’t make up for the lack of momentum.

Its box-office number in the US have been much better than people expected (possibly down to the lack of competition) but will probably do even better when it hits DVD.  An amiable, but over-long, all very predictable spliff-riff  that does for sanitising drug-running what Pretty Woman did (arguably better) for prostitution, it'll hit a particular niche well enough, but the drug-mules-as-asses tale won't prove that memorable once you leave the cinema.

7/10

We're the Millers (15)  is released by Warner Bros. on 23rd August