The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009)
Average Rating: 4.1/10
Reviews Counted: 100
Fresh: 26 | Rotten: 74
Despite the talent in front of and behind the camera, The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard largely misfires, proving a squandered opportunity for all involved.
Average Rating: 4.3/10
Critic Reviews: 24
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 18
Despite the talent in front of and behind the camera, The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard largely misfires, proving a squandered opportunity for all involved.
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Average Rating: 2.9/5
User Ratings: 73,457
My Rating
Movie Info
A smooth-talking jack-of-all-trades attempts to save a struggling car dealership from certain bankruptcy in this comedy starring Jeremy Piven, directed by Chappelle's Show creator Neal Brennan, and produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's Gary Sanchez Productions. Don Ready (Piven) takes sales seriously; he's always up for a challenge, and he parties as hard as he works. Approached to help an ailing car dealership from falling into the red, Ready recruits a crew of his best men and descends
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Cast
-
Jeremy Piven
Don Ready -
Ving Rhames
Jibby Newsome -
Ed Helms
Paxton Harding -
James Brolin
Ben Selleck -
David Koechner
Brent Gage -
Kathryn Hahn
Babs Merrick -
Jordana Spiro
Ivy Selleck -
Ken Jeong
Teddy Dang -
Bryan Callen
Jason -
Tony Hale
Wade Zooha -
Alan Thicke
Stu Harding -
Jonathan Sadowski
Blake -
Wendie Malick
Tammy Selleck -
Craig Robinson
DeeJay -
Joey Kern
Ricky -
Charles Napier
Dick Lewiston -
Rob Riggle
Peter Selleck -
Kristen Schaal
Stacey
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All Critics (101) | Top Critics (24) | Fresh (26) | Rotten (74) | DVD (2)
A throng of outrageous supporting characters do little to salvage this stalled effort.
Top CriticIt's a grab bag of comic ideas, but some of the gags are impressively perverse.
I definitely laughed, just not enough to fully recommend it.
This was funny in the beginning, no question, but then it turned into I thought a sort of a very stale comedy.
I laughed more than I thought I would (though of course hope springs eternal at the movies) and if I ran the Hollywood zoo, I'd give these particular screenwriters another assignment.
The oh-so-out-there mentality earns some chuckles, but that, along with Piven's preening, gets very trying. A hard sell is still a hard sell.
The Goods isn't trying for much but what it is trying for it more or less succeeds at. That doesn't make it a particularly good movie; in fact it pretty much ensures that it can't be one.
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard is an entirely throwaway experience that doesn't offer anything vaguely witty or clever. Look elsewhere to satisfy your comedy needs.
...an agreeable piece of work...
While it is brash and absurd and funny in fits and starts, it also seems to lose its nerve as it goes on.
The number of remotely chucklesome jokes in Neal Brennan's comedy is way too low, and the stuff in between them is grimy and depressing.
Vulgar, pointless, unfunny comedy.
Like a dodgy old motor, this smutty comedy about car salesmen roars with life to begin with but putters to a stop all too soon.
Sometimes this kind of comedy just goes too far into rubbishness to make it back.
These jokes are fired out like one of those ball-throwing machines used for baseball practice - sometimes they hit and they hurt, sometimes they miss, and sometimes they meet the bat.
It isn't merely bad, it makes you want to clamp your hands to either side of your face and do an impersonation of The Scream.
This film is so crass and so lowbrow its hairline is level with the carpet underlay. And yet, and yet, I must hang my head and confess I did laugh a fair bit.
They look as if they could provide more laughs but are defeated by bovine gags retrieved from a trashcan full of out-takes.
That mainstream cinema continually serves up such offensive offal is one thing, but the fact that the boundaries of taste are challenged with such regularity is made all the more alarming when passed off as harmless fun.
On paper, The Goods had the potential to be The Next Anchorman, but unfortunately somewhere in the drawing room, someone decided to pursue cheap laughs over something more substantial.
Jokes only get you so far, and The Goods gets increasingly bogged down in its uninspired plotlines. Ferrell's cameo is a particular lowpoint.
Audience Reviews for The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
Super Reviewer
Director: Neal Brennan
Summary: When businesses are failing, they call in Don Ready (Jeremy Piven), a fast-talking closer who can sell anything to anybody. Hired to rescue a flagging auto dealership during a Fourth of July sale, Don spends his days on the lot and his nights at local strip clubs. Everything's going swimmingly ? until he gets blindsided by love.
My Thoughts: ''It had its moments of funny. It even had some good one-liners, but that's about it. The story wasn't really great. But all the characters made up for it. Kathryn Hahn as Babs was just hysterical. Will Ferrell's small part in this was pretty funny. Liked David Koechner as well. Just OK for me. Nothing special happening in this."
Super Reviewer
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