Movie Review: The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009)

Oh, man. I don't know what I was thinking. When I saw the trailer for The Goods, I thought it could be okay. I also thought that it looked like it was trying too hard. Here were Ed Helms and Ken Jeong. They were hot off The Hangover, and here was another outrageous comedy produced by the people at Funny or Die. The cast was big and full of funny people. Jeremy Piven, Dave Koechner, Ving Rhames, Rob Riggle (one of the funniest men alive, in my opinion), Tony Hale, James Brolin, Wendy Malick and yes, even Alan fucking Thicke. The movie was directed by Dave Chappelle's former writing partner Neal Brennan. All of this reminded me of just one thing: Mars Attacks!

Buy The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard on DVD


Remember Mars Attacks!? It had a top notch cast with a well known director, and all of that amounted to an overblown piece of shit. The cast was an amazing who's who of stars and, like The Goods, included one of my favorite Canadians. It was way too much and tried way too hard. That's what happened here.



I'm all for ridiculous comedy. I just positively reviewed Archer, after all. I don't know. Maybe if this were a cartoon, I'd like it more. It just doesn't work as it is. The jokes try way too hard to be outrageous and crazy. They just pushed and pushed. You see it immediately in the beginning of the movie when Jeremy Piven talks a stewardess into letting him smoke on the plane with the type of speech we've already seen in hundreds of bad comedies. Somehow the plane turns into an orgy-like party. Too easy, and too dumb.

Will Farrell even makes a cameo appearance in a flashback. Ed Helms is severely underused, and gave me the only real laugh I remember in the movie. Riggle plays a ten-year-old with a pituitary gland issue, which is funny on the surface, and he pulls it off well enough, but the story behind him is that Piven's female cohort just wants to fuck a giant kid. It's more weird than funny, and they beat that joke to death.

I fell asleep a little over an hour into this movie. Will I go back and finish it? Hell fuck no. There's no way for this to turn around in any way that would make the first hour worth sitting through. I can already guess the ending. Let's see, Piven gets the good girl away from Helms and lives happily ever after. He and his team save the dealership. They do that thing at the end where they tell you what happened to each character. Finally, everyone who watches walks away angry. Shit, now I want to watch just to see if I'm right.

This is less a movie review and more a warning about the dangers of having Netflix streaming with a day to do nothing. The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard sucks hard.