The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

A funny look at the car sales game. It falls under the yeah right satire comedies. Along the same lines as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights and King Pin.

I dig the way Jeremy Piven acts and he comes along with many of the re-used actors in this kind of movie, Will Ferrell, David Koechner, Rob Riggle, Ed Helms and others.

The movie is has a few funny parts and some outrageous, yeah right scenes. I think this movie was a cross between comedy and those Sunday morning car lot shows. If anything you can learn about the sales tricks that some of the car salesman use, protect yourself when you go to the car lots, do your homework and stick to your plans.

It is worth renting.

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.

I gotta say, I was surprised (as I'm sure The Goods' many detractors will be) by how much I laughed during this movie. The jokes were silly and often in the background. And funny.

I am really not sure what made me laugh so hard. I think it boiled down to the fact that The Goods is a good ol' raunchy comedy, but with a twist: It seems to be aimed at adults who have lived life a bit, not the Superbad crowd. (FWIW, I do not see the humor in Superbad. I tried. Twice. Couldn't get all the way through it. But was glad I had tried, because it allowed me to laugh out loud at one of the jokes in The Goods.) I am curious if there are older people (over the age of 40, let's say) out there who also dig the film.

As for Pivens' performance, I thought it was weak in the dramatic parts, but this is a comedy, so no harm no foul, and I understand that the dramatic story is there because producers feel it's necessary.

All the players were hilarious. I thought maybe the psycho WW2 vet was a bit over the top, but he did play that part well.

This is normally not my kind of movie -- cheap, raunchy humor is not my bag. I went on a whim and was pleasantly surprised.

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.

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!