The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
Greed is good in Neal Brennan's raucous debut feature about the exploits of four car salespeople in the California town of Temecula.
Greed is good in Neal Brennan's raucous debut feature about the exploits of four car salespeople in the California town of Temecula.
Everything else in this foul-mouthed comedy from the creative forces responsible for Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby and Step Brothers is excrement.
If ever there was a compelling case for bringing charges against screenwriters who commit crimes against good taste, The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard is it.
Andy Stock and Rick Stempson's script leaves us shaking our head in embarrassment and dismay almost from the opening frame as Jeremy Piven's stripper-loving head honcho uses his powers of persuasion to orchestrate a pot-smoking orgy on a domestic air flight.
Characters are crass and dislikable and their filthy-minded dialogue is, by turns, racist, sexist and homophobic.
Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) is the leader of four hard-nosed trouble-shooters, who move from one city to the next, helping ailing auto dealerships to shift the cars on their lots.
Don's colleagues, sex siren Babs (Kathryn Hahn), number cruncher Brent (David Koechner) and retired professional athlete Jibby (Ving Rhames), share his sell-at-all-costs mentality, eschewing sentimentality if it means one more sale.
The feisty quartet answers a distress call from small town dealer Ben Selleck (Josh Brolin), whose business is in dire straits.
Don and the team swoop into action and attempt to motivate Ben's emotionally unstable sales force.
The outsiders soon fall victim to the petty rivalries of small town life.
Don develops a crush on Ben's daughter Ivy (Jordana Spiro), who is engaged to Paxton (Ed Helms), the son of sworn rival Stu Harding (Alan Thicke).
Meanwhile, Babs harbours lusty desires for Ben's 10-year-old son Peter (Rob Riggle), who has a pituitary problem that causes him to have the body of a strapping 30-year-old man.
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard is 89 minutes of mental torture, anchored by Piven's bombastic lead performance which involves lots of shouting, a spot of karaoke and some frenetic coupling in a motel with his two-dimensional love interest.
'Let's have sex in every corner of this room,' he tells Ivy.
17 seconds later, they are done.
If only Brennan's film was just as brief.
There's not a decent performance to be found anywhere in Temecula, and Brolin should hang his head in shame for ever agreeing to play a closeted married man, who makes sleazy innuendos to one of Don's team.
The central premise - Don and co must shift 211 cars from the lot in three days to save the business - is resolved with tiresome predictability.
Producer Will Ferrell cannot resist a humourless cameo as an old friend who discovers the perils of skydiving.
He takes about 30 seconds to hit terra firma and perish with an almighty thud.
Brennan's film manages it in half that time.
Release Date: Friday 23 October 2009
Certificate: 15
Runtime: 89mins
