We're the Millers

Critics shrugged and gave it a polite 61% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences laughed and moved on. We’re the Millers made a very respectable $270 million at the box office in 2013, but nobody talks about this movie. 

It just came out a few years too late to resonate. The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers kicked things off a decade of the R rated comedy in 2005. After that we got a run of Judd Apatow movies and The Hangover. Once we hit the 2010s we got Horrible Bosses and 21 Jump Street, but audiences were starting to gravitate toward superhero movies and fewer R- rated comedies were being released. This was the year of Frozen, Man of Steel, Iron Man 3, a hobbit movie and three Marvel movies. It didn’t have a chance.

The other reason this movie is overlooked is that it’s inconsistent. I had a music teacher that would tell the class that the most important parts were the beginning and end because that’s what the audience will remember. Well, while this movie is funny from beginning to end, the least funny and slowest parts are the first fifteen minutes and the last ten minutes. If that’s all you remember then you probably think of it as an amusing movie you saw a few years ago. 

The premise is ridiculous, and the film knows it. Jason Sudeikis plays a small-time drug dealer who has to smuggle a load across the Mexican border for his boss, Ed Helms. He recruits a stripper, a runaway teenager and his virginal neighbor to pose as his wholesome all-American family to help him cross the border. 

A huge part of what makes this movie work is Jennifer Aniston, who is doing something genuinely interesting with a role that could have just been the sensible, straight man of the film. Instead she’s fully in it, committing completely to both the comedy and the film’s gradual emotional growth. The result is one of her best comedic and heart-warming performances in a movie that not enough people have seen.

The same goes for Emma Roberts and Will Poulter, both of whom bring distinct personalities to what are essentially stock character types. The teenager who’s never been cool. The girl who’s tougher than she looks. In another film they’d be interchangeable. Here they’re actually people.

The script is sharper than it has any right to be. The jokes land because they’re built on character rather than situation. You’re laughing at who these people are, not just at the circumstances they’re in. That’s why the film holds up on rewatch in a way that a lot of its contemporaries don’t. You can put it on again and still find things that are funny because the funny stuff is rooted in something real about the characters, not just in a premise that exhausts itself after the first viewing.

Here’s where I make the bold statement that I hope makes you revisit this movie. Stick with it because I am convinced that the funniest continuous thirty minute stretch of any movie is in We’re the Millers, which is 52:30 - 1:22:30. This portion of the movie includes the Millers being saved by Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn (I wish they would show up in every movie) which really kicks the comedy up a notch. Campfire games, a swinger misunderstanding, kiss training, a Jennifer Aniston striptease, Will Poulter having an unfortunate run-in with a tarantula and Scottie P.

Now if you want the best 60 minute continuous stretch in any movie, you just add the 30 minutes prior to the half hour stretch (22:30-1:22:30). This gets you the family leaving for Mexico, bribing an officer and most importantly, our first introduction to the Fitzgeralds. That’s right, I’m claiming that the best hour-long stretch in any movie is actually in We’re the Millers.

What the film ultimately pulls off is a genuine argument for a found family that doesn’t feel like a thesis statement. These four people have no reason to care about each other. They’re thrown together by money and desperation and by the end you believe they genuinely choose each other. The fake family became something real enough to matter without losing the comedy and working is something that is not easy to do. 

Pull it back up. Watch the entire movie from beginning to end. Marvel at how they artfully interweave the warm, emotional moments. Notice how much you care about people you had no reason to care about. Plus, don’t forget about that hour stretch in the middle that is one of the funniest chunks of cinema you’re ever going to find. 

Are you a We’re the Millers defender, or did we just convert you? Either way — drop your take below. And if you’ve got a comedy that gets dismissed too easily, we want to hear it.