Review: We're The Millers (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2013)

David Burke (Jason Sudeikis) is a small-time pot dealer whose luck runs out when local punks steal his stash, leaving him in major debt to his ruthless supplier, Brad (Ed Helms). In order to clear it he must smuggle Brad’s latest shipment – a ‘smidge-and a half’ of Marijuana – in from a cartel in Mexico. Needing a guise to serve as a distraction, David convinces his neighbours, a recently-evicted stripper named Rose (Jennifer Anniston), an abandoned teen, Kenny (Will Poulter), and a local street-dweller, Casey (Emma Roberts), to pose with him as ‘The Millers’, a regular family vacationing in an RV for the Fourth of July weekend. Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (writer/director of Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story), We’re the Millers is not going to be remembered as a comedy classic, but one can’t deny it has ample laughs.

Whether it is Anniston gripping a blanketed weed-baby when standing opposite border patrol and an aggressive sniffer dog (amusing) or Poulter having his testicle bitten by a hairy tarantula (dumb) this film maintains an erratic energy. Often it is the improvised dialogue – the actors bounce crude insults off one another – that works far better than the staged gags.

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