Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Release Date: August 7th, 2013
Running Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Editor’s Rating: 3/12 out of 4 stars

So yeah, remember the last time you needed to smuggle an amount of marijuana across the Rio Grande? A shipment so obscenely massive, Snoop Dogg calls it Thursday?

We’ve all been there.

So it is with a glad heart that I bring to you We’re the Millers, a surprisingly well-made instructional film about smuggling amounts of illegal narcotics so ridiculously unbelievable, they make DEA bloodhounds contemplate the nature of the universe and pass out.

For a how-to video, no expense seems to have been spared, casting well-known actors across several generations, including Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, and Emma Roberts, just to name three. There’s even a cohesive narrative behind it as well. The story of a down-on-his-luck drug dealer (Sudeikis) being blackmailed by his boss and having to transport drugs across the border, or his quirky, super-white yuppie boss (Ed Helms) will kill him? Genius. It’s a position we’ve all been in before when profits are down and we took a little bit too much out of petty cash, if you know what I’m sayin’.

The film immediately identifies itself with a demographic of the US that hasn’t been addressed since Pineapple Express, and even then, the reality of the situation was just glossed over to make a Judd Apatow movie. Here, director Thurber helps us identify with the dealer from the outset using the people he lives with in a crummy-looking apartment complex: a surprisingly attractive stripper (Aniston), and a just-turned-eighteen kid with a face that scared away his own mother and entirely unrealistic view of the world (Poulter).

Sudeikis uses his ingenuity and crass attitude to come up with a plan to make the smuggle happen (as we all should), and ropes together random people he’s crossed paths with over the course of a day with the promise of money and adventure (remember when I said the Poulter kid was unrealistic?) to go down to Mexico as a “family” to avoid suspicion from the border authorities.

To elaborate any more on the story would be doing a disservice to those filmmakers who went above, beyond, and to a galaxy far, far away to create a video that entertains just as much as it informs. Let it just be said that even though there are complications, the “Millers” pull through.

However, the ending is the only part that really loses me as a businessman. Why make an instructional video that teaches a complete loss is just as significant as making untold millions off of the product? I guess that’s my only gripe with the movie. Everything else is spot-on, from the attempted group sexual encounters to throw off suspicion to using a brick of weed as a baby to keep up appearances. The movie nails it for an hour and thirty minutes, only to give it all away in the last twenty. However, the process is so simple and so effective that I can’t help but recommend it to any of you aspiring entrepreneurs out there.

If any of you watching do have families, I can’t suggest a viewing with anyone else but your partner. The language is a bit too real, and there are some steamier scenes that might spark a really awkward and unplanned conversation a bit too early.

That said, I wholeheartedly support the crew of We’re The Millers and can’t wait to see if they have any other tips and tricks to share.

**I saw this movie using a premium cable service I pay for out of my own pocket. The narrative voice in this review is entirely fictional.**

**Nobody should treat this movie like it’s an instruction booklet, or anywhere near being based in reality.**

*I mean, Ed Helms as a drug dealer? Really?*

*Oh, right. This isn’t a paid endorsement, either.*