"THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL HARD" (2009) (Jeremy Piven, Ving Rhames) (R)
If you've come from our parental review of this film and wish to return to it, simply click on your browser's BACK button.
Otherwise, use the following link to read our complete Parental Review of this film.
QUICK TAKE:
Comedy: A team of used car salespeople attempts to sell an entire lot of vehicles in three days to keep the dealership from being sold to an unscrupulous rival.
PLOT:
Ben Selleck (JAMES BROLIN) operates a struggling car dealership that has been in his family for 40 years, but is now in danger of going out of business. With the approach of a three-day Fourth of July holiday weekend, he decides to hire a team of professional used-car salespeople to give his business a quick sales boost.
The team is led by Don Ready (JEREMY PIVEN), a slick, smooth-talking liquidator who doesn't mind skipping from town to town, living in motels, eating fast-food, drinking hard liquor, and getting his kicks at the local strip club. He is joined by Jibby Newsome (VING RHAMES), a salesman who is tired of one-night stands and craves love; Brent Gage (DAVID KOECHNER), a cocksure salesman who isn't above bending the rules to make a sale; and Babs Merrick (KATHRYN HAHN), the lone female on the team who lives and sells just as hard as the boys.
What they find at Ben's dealership is a motley crew of unmotivated employees and one very profane, elderly salesman named Dick (CHARLES NAPIER), who routinely attacks customers if they say something he disagrees with or finds personally insulting. Don, meanwhile, falls for the owner's daughter, Ivy (JORDANA SPIRO). But she is engaged to the son, Paxton (ED HELMS), of Stu Harding (ALAN THICKE), Ben's rival. When Ben sells the dealership to Stu, Don wagers that he and his team can stop the sale if they sell every vehicle on the Selleck lot.
OUR TAKE: 3 out of 10
As a comedy, "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard" has one major problem. It doesn't know how to tell a joke! The film is a long series of gags and punch lines that weren't all that funny in the first 15 or 20 minutes of the film, and are then repeated throughout the rest of the movie to diminishing comedic effect. After a while, the film elicits more groans and sighs than giggles and chuckles.
Jeremy Piven stars as Don Ready, a used-car liquidator who heads a team of equally charismatic salespeople. They are hired by Ben Selleck (James Brolin). whose car lot is way behind on sales for the year. With a three-day Fourth of July holiday coming up, though, Ben hopes that turning over his entire underachieving sales staff to Don and his colleagues will pay dividends. Soon, cars start flying off the lot.
However, a rival car dealer named Stu Harding (Alan Thicke) wants to put Ben out of business so he can give his son (Ed Helms of "The Hangover") a larger rehearsal space for the boy band he has always dreamed of playing in. They strike a bet. If Don and his staff can sell every single one of the cars on Ben's lot, they'll get to keep the dealership. If there is one car left unsold, the lot becomes Stu's property.
This is a great set-up for a potentially hilarious, R-rated comedy. But the movie lacks the courage to really go for it. The film comes from the production of Will Ferrell (who has a small cameo role as a car salesman who perished as a result of Don's carelessness). So, the aging man-boy jokes are hammered into the ground like you wouldn't believe.
There is even literally an actual man-boy in the film played by Rob Riggle, who suffers from a pituitary gland condition and becomes a sex object of hot-to-trot saleslady Babs Merrick (Kathryn Hahn). Meanwhile, her colleague, Brent Gage (David Koechner), is the target of Ben's homosexual advances, and fellow salesman Jibby Newsome wants only to stop having one-night stands and find a partner into tender, meaningful sex. Of course, he turns to the local stripper with a heart of gold.
Oh yeah. That stereotype is in the film. So is the aging playboy who really wants only to find love and family and stability. That's the way the Don Ready character is ultimately neutered. We see about a dozen of these stock characters a year, usually played by guys like Matthew McConaughey and Patrick Dempsey. Piven starts off strong, kind of like the "Bad Santa" of car salesmen. But the filmmakers take all the teeth out of Don Ready in the second half of the movie, and the film falls apart as a result.
One pleasant surprise, Don and his team sell cars more through psychological tactics than via dirty tricks and unscrupulous business practices. Oh, they're still a cabal of liars, thieves, and degenerates. But they're fast-talkers. They know how to size up a customer and use his/her wants and desires to get past the initial reluctance to sales pitches and close the deal in most cases.
But that's not enough of a surprise to save the film. Don't let the red-band trailers and the quick-shot commercials sell you on this lemon. This movie is a clunker that shouldn't get your cash this or any other weekend. It rates as a 3 out of 10.
![[Logo]](/images/screenit_logo2.jpg){kind=logo}
