UNFINISHED BUSINESS
DIRECTOR: Ken Scott
CAST: Vince Vaughn, Sienna Miller, Tom Wilkinson, Dave Franco, James Marsden
CLASSIFICATION: 16 LND
RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes
RATING: **
In the years since he strutted onto the scene in Doug Liman’s Swingers (1996), Vince Vaughn (pictured) has become one of the poster boys for the mainstream American comedy: from romantic (The Break-Up) to bromantic (Old School), pretty good (Wedding Crashers) to very bad (Fred Claus) to frankly unnecessary (Delivery Man).
Unfinished Business falls into that last subcategory (it, too, was directed by Ken Scott). A guys-gone-wild romp in the tradition of Todd Phillips’ Hangover franchise, this is the latest example of a film that doesn’t work hard enough to freshen up formulas used and abused by filmmakers like Phillips, Judd Apatow, Nicholas Stoller, Seth Gordon and others.
Unfinished Business will seem woefully familiar to anyone who’s been to a movie theatre over the past 10 years. Male sexual panic gags involving penises. Drug-fuelled bacchanals shown in slow-mo. Car high jinks. Disposable, misogynistically conceived female characters. Lessons learned (don’t be a bully; never give up; appreciate what you have).
Vaughn plays Dan, a sales exec who quits his job toiling for a bullying boss named Chuck (Miller) and starts his own company with two fellow outcasts: retirement-age Timothy (Wilkinson) and sweet-natured but slow-witted Mike (Franco). The trio travels to Maine, then to Europe in an effort to beat out Chuck for a lucrative deal with a firm fronted by Jim Spinch (Marsden).
Needless to say, chaos ensues. But Unfinished Business never works up enough momentum to get us into the anarchic spirit of things. It unfolds as a series of half-hearted set pieces written and directed with little flair or commitment and no connective tissue between them. Like The Wedding Ringer, Unfinished Business goes through the motions, offering up ostensibly outrageous sights and situations either so derivative or so listlessly staged as to barely warrant a raised eyebrow.
When it’s not indulging in lowbrow sex humour, the script, courtesy of Steven Conrad, tosses around some lame jokes – sometimes repeatedly. Much is made, for instance, of the fact that a main character’s last name is Pancake; are you laughing yet? Even one of the movie’s more gently amusing bits, Mike’s mispronunciation of words like “exploit” and “imperative”, is run into the ground.
There are a couple of good lines – Dan references Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself while telling his overweight son (Britton Sear) that masturbation is okay – but most of the dialogue is in-one-ear-out-the-other forgettable.
Vaughn’s work here might be best described as functional. He does a slight variation on the persona he’s been playing for years: the brash guy with a heart of gold. As appealing and assured a comic performer as he is, he hasn’t stretched or challenged himself in a while.
Wilkinson’s role consists essentially of uttering words like “pussy”, “titty” and “cock” as if the prospect of an actor of a certain age cursing is all the comedy anyone needs.
If the movie has a bright spot, it’s Franco. The actor is the one person onscreen who seems determined to cobble together what little he’s given into a distinctive character.
Scott is workmanlike though uninspired, displaying little visual imagination and even less sense of risk. Undemanding audiences may be satisfied, but Unfinished Business is the cinematic equivalent of subpar fast food: it’s cheap, easy and maybe even tasty for a second or two, but leaves you feeling queasy and undernourished.
If you liked Delivery Man or Fred Claus, you will like this.
The Hollywood Reporter