Review of The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009) by Jason G — 06 Aug 2011

My introduction to Jeremy Piven was through PCU. The dude was born to play "the cool guy." He just has that charisma. Cocky, a bit of a dick (comes along with being cocky) . . . and any other penis-related description you'd like to throw in there as well. While I'm not really a fan of the show, he finally was thrown in the spotlight once Entourage hit. It was only a matter of time before he was given another lead in a film, hence The Goods. If you want to be one of those "exceptional" people, the full title is, "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard," but that's just fuckin' retarded.

As far as plot goes, there's a dying car dealership and the owner enlists Jeremy Piven (does it really matter what his character's name is?) and his crack sales team to lead the way and move some fuckin' cars! Yeah! Okay, not that exciting but it really doesn't matter. You can make a movie about an ice cream salesman and make it interesting, because sales tend to be inherently interesting (to me, anyway).

You can sense the problems with this flick right off the bat. It's a big studio picture. There's a dozen great actors here, so you get the idea that the studio pumped some money into the movie (Roughly 10 million), but the writing is crap, so it's all for nothing. They're really trying way too hard to nail some laughs, and they shove the humor right in your face instead of trying to let it flow naturally.

First up, we have your predictability factor. The team has to move every car off the lot. Will they do it? Piven falls for a girl who has a dick fiance. Will she see the error in this and fall for the lead? Piven has never settled down, so much so that he brings fast food with him to home-cooked dinners. Will he have a change of heart about his fast-paced lifestyle? Yeah, you know the answers to these questions and that's fine, as long as you make the trip fun. As previously mentioned though, the trip is more like a pain in the ass with a few cool pit stops along the way.

There's a run-on joke that Ving Rhames' character has never made love. Sure, he's fucked hundreds of women, but never made love to one. He goes on and on about this, and over the course of the film finally finds a woman who he can feel something for. When the punch line is delivered, you're left thinking, "All that build-up for that? Really?" Most of the humor hits like this. Then there's the usual run of vulgar jokes as well, in case you find Will Ferrell sky-diving and slapping a dildo away funny (actually, scratch that, that scene was pretty fucking funny).

And that's what makes the movie watch-able. There are some great comedic actors here and some of the time, they really do make this POS script work. Unfortunately the bulk of your time will probably be spent thinking how much of a paycheck these folks got. Hopefully it was worth it, because the end result is this failed comedy.