The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.