The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

After reading so many bad reviews and angry critiques by many people who have only heard certain lines out of context and have not actually watched the entire film, I was surprised and thoroughly pleased to be laughing out loud throughout this entire movie. After a slightly slow start with few jokes in the first ten minutes setting up the story and characters, they finally arrive at the car lot and the story then immediately develops into a very funny final eighty minutes. It is a comedy with an ensemble cast of actors featured in numerous Ferrell/McKay movies with plenty of good-natured humorous satire of needless prejudices that will be familiar to anyone who has watched Chappelle's Show and was able to grasp the satire behind it. Rather than setting up one big gag for the end, the movie has countless visual jokes, hidden background details and subtexts, and quotable lines of funny dialogue layered so thick that multiple viewings will still be enjoyable. This is far superior to Brennan's first film, the unfortunately only mildly humorous Totally Awesome, and features significantly better casting, directing, editing, and production skills. I was concerned that it would be another letdown, but this movie far exceeded my expectations and I look forward to watching it again and noticing even more funny things because some of the funniest details are said immediately after another joke and may be missed because of laughter or are humorous small visual details. This type of layered comedy is known from Anchorman, Caddyshack, Step Brothers, Super Troopers, and Chappelle's Show, so if you liked those then you will be able to appreciate all of the funny lines and jokes from the varied and great cast and all of the humorous details carefully interwoven into this film. Will Ferrell was amazing as a character more crass than ever before and veteran actors Alan Thicke and Ving Rhaymes surprise with their character-breaking roles. Ed Helms and Rob Riggle were my main reasons for wanting to see this film and they do not disappoint when on camera, but I was a skeptical viewer pleased to find that the film was thoroughly funny from start to finish no matter who was on camera in a particular moment. This is what Totally Awesome should have been and exactly what a contemporary comedy should be.

It seems like every week i'm saying there is a new "funniest movie of the year." "Funny People" is my current favorite but "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard" is it's non-dramatic equivalent.

First off this is a great role for Jeremy Piven, very much in Ari Gold-form as Don Ready, a car salesman-for-hire who travels around America with his crew helping out lackluster dealerships. Don is the type of character you immediately love, a born talker who not only manages to smoke on the plane ride over to Temecula, CA, he turns it into an all-out orgy complete with live mariachi band.

Why go to Temecula? The car dealership owned by Ben Selleck (James Brolin) is in trouble, struggling with rag-tag salesman, poor sales returns, and as Babs (Kathryn Hahn), one part of Don's crew points out, the place looks like a "refugee camp for dirty men." Along with his other two sidekicks, Brent (David Koechner) and Jibby (Ving Rhames), Don must sell all the cars off the lot or the dealership faces being sold to Stu Harding (Alan Thicke), another more successful dealer.

His son is Paxton Harding (Ed Helms), a late-30's man whose real dream is for his boy band to finally get off the ground. Paxton is engaged to Selleck's daughter Ivy (Jordana Spiro), who Don also finds attractive. Soon Ivy, plus a long-lost son Don fathered when he was 10-years old, encourages him to think about finally settling down. Wall to wall ridiculousness ensues.

Directed by Neal Brennan (a former writer on Chappelle Show) and written by Andy Stock and Rick Stempson, this is an offensively rude, crude, profane laugh machine from first scene to last. There are a few really good lines and the supporting cast gets some of the most hilarious material i've seen this year. The Daily Show's Rob Riggle as Selleck's son Peter, a 10 year old with a pituitary problem that makes him look 40. Kathryn Hahn as Don's sexually abrasive partner, using porno to sell cars and lusting after the innocent but very hunky Peter. Charles Napier as an older salesman who pines for the olden days and gets crazily angry and offensive to women, gays, Asians, and just about everybody really. Ving Rhames, playing a character who's had sex with thousands of women but has never "made love". Ed Helms, with his pot-belly and spiky hair-do, does nice work with the boy band stuff. James Brolin has a running gay gag with David Koechner that never gets old, and Brolin's car commercial, where he guilt-trips everyone to buy because he is dying of ball cancer, had me in tears. And like I said, I'm trying not to give too much away but Will Ferrell gets a cameo that single-handedly makes you forgive the atrocity that was "Land of the Lost."

This is all just the tip of the iceberg of this insanely hilarious movie. You just want to start listing funny thing after funny thing, its that good.

I went in to this movie with very low expectations and it turned out to be worse than i thought. I liked Stepbrothers and Talledega Nights and all those other movies but this just wasn't funny. It had plenty of funny people in it ( Jeremy Piven, Will Ferrel, Craig Robinson, and Andy Bernard from the Office), but they didn't have any funny lines. I think I laughed maybe 3-4 times. The writers just didn't write anything funny. Hollywood needs to quit with the over-hyped garbage they have been making lately. Comedy movies should have to pass through a screening before they get released. This was even worse than Land of the Lost.

Someone owes me 7 dollars plus some gas money...

Gone are the days when a comedy with a premise as simple as this, would have made me laugh uncontrollably at every instance of humour. It's either I've grown older and more cynical, or have totally lost my funny bone. I'd reckon that it's more of the former, as I still laugh just as hard when I revisit comedies done by the Zucker Brothers time and again, which measured by my personal yardstick, goes to show that the comedies these days lack a certain oomph. Watching this was a reminiscence of an era that I'm still missing, where comedies really gave audiences some bang for their buck with jokes that will send you rip- roaring.

What filmmakers like director Neal Brennan would reckon is funny, is the constant dropping of F-bombs and turning everything possible into a sexual innuendo, be it hitting on the gays, or treading so finely on pedophilia, which I suppose to him is meant to be funny with a female cougar scouring quite unsuccessfully a boy who's trapped in a man's body.

The flimsy plot on which the laughs are built upon, involve a used car business founded by Ben Selleck (James Brolin), who has seen better days, and is now threatened with foreclosure. His sales force, made up of the likes of a senile drill sergeant (Charles Napier) and a madcap korean (Ken Jeong rising to some prominence these days), spells doom especially when they lose customers more than keep and sell them something. Hence extreme times like this meant to engage an external, proved consultant, and that's Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) and his team of Jibby Newsome (Ving Rhames), Brent Gage (David Koechner) and Babs Merrick (Kathryn Hahn).

Part of the fun here I suppose is how each character has to exorcise their personal demons and issues, especially with members of the Selleck family. For Don, it's the prospect of acknowledging a long lost son whom he had unknowingly left behind, and the wooing of Ivy Selleck (Jordana Spiro), who is engaged to boy band leader Paxton Harding (Ed Helms from The Hangover). Then there's Brent who has to keep Ben Selleck himself off his back given the latter's newfound sexual desire. Babs is trying to hit on man-child Peter Selleck (Rob Riggle), a 10 year old trapped in a 30 year old body. And Jibby just wants to make love. Right. Jeremy Piven also lacked that cocky charisma to have carried his character off, and unfortunately for him too that the last act have him moping and whining more than the cocksure seller that he supposedly is.

There's nothing you won't already predict in the narrative as it unfolds and coasts along from joke to joke with its cardboard characters, some of which do work, but most falling flat on its face. Nothing surprising will turn up as you'll see all incoming development from a mile away, right up to the finale. The saving grace may just be Will Farell's uncredited appearance together with two gospel angels who don't mince their lyrics, but other than that, The Goods should have tried harder to live up to its tagline in putting bums on seats - I got an entire hall to myself!

I've seen a lot of posts on this site either claiming this a terrible waste of time or the funniest ever made. The truth is the people that deemed this "unwatchable" or "left after 30 mins" should never have gone in the first place. What did you expect.. seriously? The writing could have been a lot better but it was still entertaining. It's worth a watch but is not as good as Talladega Nights or Anchorman. Ed Helms and Rob Riggle stole the screen much like they did in The Hangover. However disappointing was the performance by Ken Juong, who suffered badly from the lack of creative writing. In the end, the movie "is what it is" a decent hit and miss comedy.