Reviews

Review: The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

Idiotic, but not a total lemon

By SHAULA CLARK | August 19, 2009

2.0 Stars

Cash for clunkers? Not completely — Neal Brennan's movie, in which car-salesman mercenary Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) works his magic on a dying dealership, might be a bottomless barrel of idiotic yuks. But it's not a total lemon.

Skipping the "ragtag goofballs climb from zeroes to heroes" rigmarole these films usually relish, it instead lets Don get busy with his crack team of weirdlings: loyal math whiz Brent (David Koechner), tough-as-nails trollop Babs (Kathryn Hahn), and superfreak Jibby (Ving Rhames). The mega-dumb gay and racial jokes get tedious quick.

But The Goods offers a few small, crude pleasures, like Alan Thicke as the hatefully smug owner of the rival car dealership and Charles Napier playing a crazy old codger who looks as if he could chomp through steel beams.

Related: Review: The Hangover, Free and easy, The Mighty Wind, More

Review: The Hangover
The increasingly tiresome trend of raunchy comedies about bad male behavior finds nothing new to laugh about in Todd Phillips's retread of Old School.
Free and easy
With a beach season approaching in which most people will be squeezing quarters till the eagles fart, it's fair enough to ask aloud, "Is this going to be the worst summer ever ?"
The Mighty Wind
The Rhode Island recession, among the worst in the country, has become something of a national curiosity: how could such a little state be in such big trouble?
Review: Dollhouse
Joss Whedon continues to fight the darkness
A mighty wind
This past Earth Day, President Barack Obama, speaking at an Iowa wind-turbine factory, delivered a gusty peroration. "The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy," he said. "America can be that nation. America must be that nation."
Not so great X-pectations
It doesn't bode well when one of a movie's supervillains has a Roman numeral for a name.
Nice package
As the largest stimulus package in world history winds its way through Congress, the critics are already out in force.
Men plus money equals mess
Since Iceland is something of the epicenter of the global financial crisis — its government being the first to essentially go belly up — it's probably not surprising that the Icelanders have come up with the most novel and interesting theory as to what caused the meltdown. And they may be right.
Going Green: July 10, 2009
Maine will never be a leader in wind-energy development, says Richard Silkman, co-founder and -manager of a firm that could revolutionize the way we address energy issues in this state and throughout the region. "We missed our chance," he stated flatly during a presentation at the Maine Audubon Society in June.
The Big Hurt: Devil music
When I was around 10 years old, I wandered into a rural flea market and found one of the greatest pieces of music journalism ever written: a forgotten crank masterpiece called Backward Masking Unmasked that had been written in 1983 by Texan minister Jacob Aranza.
Confront taxes
Dear Deval: you’re almost there.
Less

Topics: Reviews , Politics, Celebrity News, Entertainment, More

Comments

Add a Comment

Today's Event Picks

[MUSIC] He'll show you the way (every day)

ARTICLES BY SHAULA CLARK

INTERVIEW: PAULA DEEN | August 26, 2009
"I'm just looking so forward to coming up there. And having lobster. In some butter. Did I mention I like butter?"

REVIEW: PLAY THE GAME | August 26, 2009
This is the kind of movie you stagger out of in a stunned trance.

REVIEW: THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL HARD | August 19, 2009
Cash for clunkers? Not completely.

REVIEW: THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE | August 19, 2009
Long a staple of sci-fi, time travel makes its chick-flick debut in Robert Schwentke's adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's novel.

REVIEW: BANDSLAM | August 12, 2009
This Todd Graff film suggests a year's worth of Degrassi plots squished into one overcomplicated bouillon cube.

See all articles by: SHAULA CLARK

Most Viewed

Most Emailed

PHOTOS: BRITNEY SPEARS AT TD GARDEN
Photos of Britney Spears' Circus tour at TD Garden

A GIRL'S GUIDE TO BOSTON BOYS
Autumn opens itself wide with possibility. And Boston begins to crackle with fresh energy (you'll feel it), as the city spreads its arms to thousands of new humans. New brains and bodies abuzz with all sorts of anticipation. The feeling of fall: potential .

HIGH DIVES
Dive bars. Where the drinks are cold and stiff. Where the air wafts with the unmistakable but not-altogether-unpleasant tang of suds long since spilled. Where the neon shines bright and true and the jukebox plays good and loud.

SHORT-SIGHTED?
There may, in the end, be no way to save the American metropolitan newspaper. Plummeting advertising revenue and competition from the Internet often seem forces too daunting for even the savviest of publishers.

THE GRANITE STATE GANG
Big bucks couldn't buy the viral awe and ire that the Free State Project (FSP) scored on August 11, when New Hampshire resident William Kostric arrived outside President Barack Obama's Portsmouth Town Hall meeting with a handgun on his right thigh — "open carrying" is quite legal in the Granite State — and a sign declaring IT IS TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY!

AFTER TED
The death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy early Wednesday morning brings to a close the life and legendary career of one of Massachusetts's greatest political figures.

SHORT-SIGHTED?
There may, in the end, be no way to save the American metropolitan newspaper. Plummeting advertising revenue and competition from the Internet often seem forces too daunting for even the savviest of publishers.

REVIEW: IT MIGHT GET LOUD
Some guitar teachers will tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to play the guitar. But Davis Guggenheim’s rousing new documentary, It Might Get Loud, reminds us that that’s not true at all.