Jeremy Piven Doesn't Deliver in The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

Comments (0) By Vadim Rizov Thursday, Aug 13 2009

Making headline writers' lives everywhere easier: The Goods doesn't deliver.

Jeremy Piven as Don Ready in The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard.

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Don Ready (Jeremy Piven, not changing a note from Entourage) is a hired-gun slasher salesman, the guy you call when your used-car business is in trouble. With his team, Don's a genius at clearing out stagnant lots. Producers Adam McKay and Will Ferrell are firmly in Anchorman territory, which means there's zero time wasted on token sentiment. They also miss a chance to immerse themselves in a potentially rich environment, shown in all its gimmicky grandeur in John Landis's underrated used-car-salesman documentary Slasher. Nothing here convinces.

Briskly vulgar, The Goods skips scatology and goes straight for the gonads: "I have hair on my balls, and I sell cars" is how Ready introduces himself. Compared to this year's truly vile specimens (like Miss March), The Goods is unobjectionable, but shoddy. The few real laughs — all two minutes' worth — come courtesy of Russ Meyer veteran Charles Napier as Dick Lewiston, the angriest macho male anachronism of the year: "I don't like Jews, queers, or Eskimos," he announces apropos of nothing. "I was raised that way."

Napier connects the dots between economic disenfranchisement and subversive humor—the rest of it is just a bunch of absurd dick jokes.