I love gratuitousness in comedies. Movies like Harold & Kumar push the envelope so far as to what's appropriate to laugh at that it just becomes absurdly entertaining. I also love comedy in my comedies. Sadly, Vince Vaughn's latest alleged comedy Unfinished Business has all the gratuitousness you could ever want, but falls short on the funny.
It is intermittently amusing. And by that I mean a few moments make you smile, chuckle even, due to the ridiculousness of the situation they're in. The cast - Vince Vaughn, Dave Franco, and Tom Wilkinson - are fine. Nick Frost also has a small role, which should have been fleshed out because he has the most entertaining parts of the movie. The problem is the material just isn't good. The writing is choppy, uneven, and distractingly terrible. It would've been better for the cast to improv for an hour-and-a-half, that would at least be entertaining. The story here tries to tie together an explicit raunchy comedy with a homely family drama and a vain attempt at a business narrative that revolves completely around "the handshake." It just makes no sense, from a cohesion standpoint and a movie-making standpoint - how on earth was this green-lit? Who was the audience for this? Certainly not kids, definitely not adults. Who thought this was a good idea?
It's a shame because I really like Vince Vaughn. He is fine in the movie, as is the rest of the cast, but they have absolutely nothing to work with. Throwing all the boobs and penises in the world on screen does not make a good comedy. At the end of the day, Unfinished Business should have been left unfinished.
It is intermittently amusing. And by that I mean a few moments make you smile, chuckle even, due to the ridiculousness of the situation they're in. The cast - Vince Vaughn, Dave Franco, and Tom Wilkinson - are fine. Nick Frost also has a small role, which should have been fleshed out because he has the most entertaining parts of the movie. The problem is the material just isn't good. The writing is choppy, uneven, and distractingly terrible. It would've been better for the cast to improv for an hour-and-a-half, that would at least be entertaining. The story here tries to tie together an explicit raunchy comedy with a homely family drama and a vain attempt at a business narrative that revolves completely around "the handshake." It just makes no sense, from a cohesion standpoint and a movie-making standpoint - how on earth was this green-lit? Who was the audience for this? Certainly not kids, definitely not adults. Who thought this was a good idea?
It's a shame because I really like Vince Vaughn. He is fine in the movie, as is the rest of the cast, but they have absolutely nothing to work with. Throwing all the boobs and penises in the world on screen does not make a good comedy. At the end of the day, Unfinished Business should have been left unfinished.