Dir. Neil Brennan

89mins, USA, 2009

Cast: Jeremy Piven, Ving Rhames, James Brolin, David Koechner, Kathryn Hahn

Release Date: 23rd October

Certificate: 15

Review by Matthew Rodgers

There should be a third addition to the title of this turgid Will Ferrell/Adam Mckay production. Accompanying Live Hard and Sell hard, should be “trying too bloody hard”, because rarely in recent memory has a film with such promising credentials strained at the seams to be funny and failed on such a monumental scale.

Using the Talladega template of the team of whacky characters rooted in the periphery of American society, we are introduced to used-car salesman Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) and his crack-pot team of salesmen. There’s Jibby (Ving Rhames), a sensitive soul that’s never been in love, Babs (Kathryn Hahn), a nymphomaniac with a truly offensive penchant for mentally disabled men that even the Farrelly brothers would have avoided, and Brent Gage (David Koechner), a character so colossally unfunny that it’s hard to recall his part in the plot dynamics. So when a flailing automotive dealership calls upon their services to keep them afloat it’s up to Ready and Co. to save the day.

There can be such a thing as too many jokes. Movies like Airplane get away with it because primarily they’re funny, but their success also lies in the joke-to-laugh ratio. By cramming the script with enough jaw-rattlers you also forget the few tumbleweeds. The Goods problem is that despite firing off its fair share of one-liners there is literally only one moment of mirth, and when that features an un-credited Will Ferrell grasping at a sex toy whilst tumbling from a plane, you know its going to be a long ninety minutes.

How on earth it manifests itself as this clunking rust-bucket of a comedy when its headlined by Jeremy Piven is anybody’s guess? Piven lights up the small screen every week with his Emmy award winning role as tough-talking agent Ari Gold in the wonderful HBO drama Entourage, yet none of that translates here. As the movie progresses it becomes a challenge for him not only to deliver the turgid punchlines but also to hide his obvious embarrassment at such awful scriptwriting and one-take direction.

Everyone involved is in need of an immediate tune-up, and the film itself appears to have had plenty of wasted engine work in the editing suite already, possibly teenage boys will find some appeal in the crass nature of the adolescent comedy, but that may be doing them a disservice. This is an unmitigated disaster.