Unfinished Business

Here is a real sad sack of a movie.  Nobody looks like they had fun while they were making it.  The movie is lifeless and gloomy.  Even the screenplay credited to Steve Conrad (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) can barely muster any enthusiasm for itself, and is built of a bunch of scenes where little to nothing happens.  Unfinished Business just kind of sits there, looking at its feet for 90 minutes, and then quietly asks us to leave.

The ad campaign for the movie is a total bait and switch.  The trailers would like you to believe that this is a raunchy comedy with Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson and Dave Franco playing uptight guys who cut loose during a business trip to Germany, and get into a lot of crazy alcohol-fueled situations inspired by The Hangover.  What you should know is that all those scenes of the characters partying is taken from a five minute montage that happens about 70 minutes into the film.  What the movie really is, or at least wants to be, is a heartfelt drama about Vaughn as a concerned dad trying to help his overweight preteen son overcome the bullies at school who are harassing him on line.  He's on this business trip to Germany so he can sign a deal that will give him the money to send his kid to a private school.  There are some attempts at humor during the trip, but every single joke falls flat.  There's not a single laugh to be had.  Believe me, I counted.

The opening scene seems to be inspired by Jerry Maguire, with a man named Dan Trunkman (Vaughn) telling off his cold as ice boss (Sienna Miller) after she gives him a 5% pay cut, and walking out of his job, vowing to start his own company and compete with her.  Only two of the other employees at the company agree to join up with his start-up business.  One of them is Timothy (Tom Wilkinson), a somewhat bitter and unhappily married old man who constantly dreams about having sex with a woman in a 'wheelbarrow position" and won't shut up about it.  The other is Mike Pancake (Dave Franco), a fresh-faced kid who, if only he was a little bit smarter, could be considered a moron.  I hope you find the fact that Mike's last name is Pancake funny, because it's one of the most repeated gags in the film.

A lot of the movie hangs on the chemistry between these three guys, and the actors have none.  It's not that they're not trying, they just seem kind of defeated by the material they've been given.  Vaughn and Wilkinson, in particular, seem tired and unfocused.  As for Franco, he seems to be trying, but really comes off as annoying instead of funny.  His performance rubbed me the wrong way from the moment he walked on screen, and considering that he's supposed to be the comedic highlight of the film, that's a very bad sign.  The movie follows the three guys as they try to make a deal with a much bigger corporation.  They fly out to Portland, Maine first, and then to Germany.  The movie makes it a point to note that the heroes have no money left, so how they are affording these flights and hotels, I have no idea.

As the guys go about on the business trip, Vaughn's character is constantly interrupted by his problems at home.  He has two kids, one who is being bullied, and the other a girl who keeps on getting in fights at school.  His wife is basically a non-entity, and only exists to call him and talk about what's going on with the kids multiple times a day.  There is an attempt at a subplot where Vaughn begins to realize he should be at home more for his kids, but it doesn't go anywhere.  Nothing in this movie goes anywhere.  This is the sort of movie that throws in a scene where the three heroes walk into a gay bar to look for a business client, and it forgets to have anything funny or racy happen.  Oh, we get a scene built around a "glory hole" in the bathroom of the bar, but again, nothing happens. 

Unfinished Business certainly feels unfinished on just about every level.  It delivers no laughs, the dramatic moments are schmaltzy, and everybody within it seems to just be cashing a paycheck so they can wipe this movie off their resumes as quick as possible.  Everybody involved with this seems to hope no one will notice it, so you should grant their wish and save your money.

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