Jennifer Aniston continues on her one-woman campaign to star with every conceivable romantic comedic actor on the face of the planet - seriously, check out her co-stars to date: Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Gerard Butler, Adam Sandler, Paul Rudd, Jason Bateman… is there anyone left? - with this effort that is thankfully a little bit more Horrible Bosses and less Just Go With It, thanks to some bad language and a bounty of sexy times.
Aniston plays Rose, a stripper who gets talked into doing an across-the-Mexican-border drug run by her neighbour David (Jason Sudekis) in exchange for, well, a lot of money. Posing as husband and wife along with their too-nice-for-his-own-good faux-son Kenny (Will Poulter) and teenage dirtbag fake-daughter Casey (Emma Roberts), it's not long before they're caught up in a tangled web of crooked cops, majorly annoyed drug barons and endless double-crosses.
Honestly, the plot is more of a hindrance than a help, constantly getting in the way of the movie trying to get it's funny on. Whenever the "Millers" put on a show of what they consider to be a perfectly functioning family unit, the funnies come thick and fast. Sudekis works wonders as a sleazy, selfish charmer, Aniston still has the comedic timing that made her our favorite Friend, and Will Poulter is fantastic as the genuinely innocent face of the family.
However, all too often the movie pulls over to explain that there is still a plot tying all of this together, and it completely slackens the momentum it had been building up. Add to that the formulaic and fundamentally annoying trend of enjoyably harsh comedies feeling the need to go all mawkish and sentimental to prove that it really does have a heart of gold, plus Emma Roberts' complete non-presence on-screen, and what have you got?
A very average movie, beset on both sides with moments of greatness and awfulness. As far as Jennifer Aniston comedies go, it's actually pretty good. But as far as comedies go in general, it's all too forgettable.