A lazy piece of junk from start to finish. We’re supposed to give this movie a free pass because it “has heart” and the characters are “likable.” So what? I’m really getting tired of critics rubber-stamping ambition-deprived-mediocrity just because its characters are warm and fuzzy. Nowhere is this more problematic than comedy. A good comedy should be a little ruthless in its execution, and this film is soft as wet cheese.
What Works: It’s not a bad idea to follow two laid-off, middle-aged businessmen as they have to reinvent themselves in a new economy by taking an internship with Google…
What Doesn’t Work:…But much like The Purge, this film royally bungles its initial premise with half-hearted execution, a stench of mediocrity, the pacing of a turtle (this film felt 4 hours long), and one-dimensional supporting characters. The unlikable British villain (played by a pair of eyebrows known as Max Minghella) makes Bradley Cooper’s Wedding Crashers bad-guy look endlessly deep in comparison. Owen Wilson plays up all his worst big-studio instincts, completely phoning it in with his most obnoxiously self-satisfied performance in years. And it’s past time for Vince Vaughn to get a new persona or at least tweak his existing one. As it is, he just feels like part of that 90’s comedy school where the guys just want to hang out, get paid huge amounts of money, and never break a sweat. Will Ferrell (here playing a highlight cameo character with a neck tattoo) and Ben Stiller have pushed their comedy into increasingly risky territory, why can’t Vaughn? Maybe he’s just not that guy, and never really was.
What I Would Have Done Differently: There are cheaper ways to make a 2-hour Google product placement (this film cost 60 million, it will be lucky to make 40 million). I think the original, years-ago version of this film followed Vaughn and Wilson’s characters as they journeyed to Mexico to keep their outsourced jobs, and I think that premise would be better…After all, there’s a 15 minute section in the movie where they go to a strip club for some “wild and crazy” shenanigans and that feels like a tacit omission that the audience is probably bored with the initial premise, especially since they might have been expecting Wedding Crashers 2 style crassness.