We’re the Millers: Review

Using the tone and structure of my movie review blog, I wrote a review of the summer comedy hit. We’re the Millers.

Formulaic and raunchy, but undeniably funny

September 3, 2013 | By Rachel Weeks

Like Steve Martin before him with Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Jason Sudeikis has made his way from the Saturday Night Live stage to a wickedly funny — albeit formulaic — road trip movie. We’re the Millers — armed with an arsenal of comedy greats (namely Sudeikis, Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn) — is unapologetic and wildly hilarious.

Sudeikis’ sharp wit and goofy smile serve him well as the small-time pot dealer, David Clark, who finds himself a fake family to smuggle marijuana across the Mexico/United States border. With a struggling stripper (Jennifer Aniston), a grungy runaway (Emma Roberts) and a delightfully naïve neighbor (Will Poulter) in tow, David easily gets his rented RV across the border and picks up the “smidge and a half“ of marijuana that is waiting for him. But as any good moviegoer knows, the trip there is not the hard part.

On the way back, the Millers encounter an unexpected series of trials including brushes with the Mexican police and border patrol, an angry drug lord, a poisonous spider, and Don and Edie Fitzgerald (the always hilarious, Offerman and Hahn) and their daughter Melissa (Molly Quinn), a squeaky-clean, RVing family that helps the Millers with some car trouble.

Despite all that, director Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) and his army of screenwriters still manage to tie everything up with a big bow. In the end, We’re the Millers is both perfectly charming and perfectly lewd; it won’t win any Oscars, just as it certainly hasn’t won many movie critics. But critics be damned, We’re the Millers is 110 minutes of funny and will find its way into any comedy lover’s movie collection, after it inevitably hits the discount shelf.

Created by Rachel Weeks in 2013. Production took place during a Freelance Magazine Writing class at Drake University under the supervision of Jeff Inman.