We’re the Millers  (2013)    73/100

Rating :   73/100                                                                     110 Min        15

Surprising enjoyable. As this is a light hearted comedy film we know exactly where it’s heading – its success is that we are quite happy for it to do so. Jason Sudeikis is a small time drug dealer who falls into debt with a bigger fish in his regional pond. To make amends he agrees to drive down to Mexico and collect a new shipment of Marijuana, and to facilitate the operation he decides to bring along a collection of people to pose as his family ‘The Millers’, people who are, for a variety of reasons, all at loose ends. The fake family are rounded out by Jennifer Aniston as the mom, and Emma Roberts and Will Poulter as the two kids.

Drawing quite a bit of attention from the trailers, something which they cunningly focused on, is Aniston’s character’s occupation, that of a nightclub stripper, suggesting her acting career may be continuing along the path begun with her more sexualised role in ‘Horrible Boses’ (11), and here the film lives up to expectations, with a lithe and salacious Aniston brazenly giving a show in itself more erotic than the whole of ‘Showgirls’ (95) taken together, and yet it never feels overtly gratuitous, in a sort of Megan Fox ‘Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen’ (09) kind of way, and she simultaneously maintains the spirit of most of her romcom characters as well.

The film provides a few genuine laughs, but scores highest with it’s enjoyable character dynamic, with some obvious improv and in the case of Will Poulter it features a rare cinematic moment when you are not only happy for the character, but also very much for the actor playing them too (you’ll see what I mean).

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