We're the Millers

Where most comedies depict families overcoming their tensions and outside threats to reaffirm their unity, in We’re the Millers four non- or even anti-family characters discover the rewards of being a family. The film ends up rejecting the opening scene schnook’s declared frustration with having a family and envy for his college friend David’s (Jason Sudeikis) single, irresponsible life.  

The children in David’s pretend family, Kenny (Will Poulter) and Casey (Emma Roberts), are refugees from single-parent neglect and homelessness, respectively. The parents-to-be, David and Rose (Jennifer Aniston), are moderate outlaws, he a small-time drug dealer, she a virtuous stripper. Surprisingly, they will find success, fulfillment and comfort in the alien language and posture of conventional parents. So the stripper’s real name turns out to be -- Sarah, the tormented but ultimately blessed wife of the patriarch Abraham. The nebbish David ultimately brings down two drug Goliaths.

      The conventional comedy disrupts a situation of familial and social order, then subdues the chaos in the last scene, restoring order. Here we start with chaos that erupts into something like order. The outlaws eventually go straight and all four loners take advantage of the Witness Protection Program to set up a home together. That protects them less from the drug bosses than from their own impulses to be loners. Though they ultimately live the front of a normal family --as they did even in their initial bickering and anger -- the foreground marijuana plants suggest the family will retain their off-beat character and charm. They return to a new improved, harmonized chaos.  

Much of the humour derives from the pretend normal family’s indecorous language, actions and values. But the film’s question is “What is a normal family?” The family of DEA officer Don Fitzgerald (Nick Offerman) may seem mainstream white bread until their sexual peccadildoes whir into action. No wonder Edie (Kathryn Hahn), her marriage threatened by her shallow vagina, cried at Free Willy. They are potentially kinkier than our Millers. As Rose fulfills her inner Sarah, Edie will find fulfillment when her Don (taking David’s advice to treat her like a stripper) brings out her inner Rose.

So, too, the clean cut and cheery Ed Helms makes Brad Gurdlinger a far cry from the conventional big time drug boss, whose standard is reflected in his rival Pablo (Tome Sisley) and his henchman One-Eye (Matthew Willig). Of course, one eye precludes perception of depth, which is precisely what playing against the genre conventions brings this film. 

As he frisks against film conventions, director Rawson Marshall Thurber (whom I most fondly remember for his 2002 short, Terry Tate Office Linebacker, and his other parody of teamwork, Dodgeball), stacks up film references. A tough decision is a Sophie’s Choice moment. The last kissing/fireworks scene evokes To Catch a Thief. When the DEA’s Don deploys David, he will Set a Dealer to Catch a Dealer. The Dexter reference over the white plastic draws on the One-Eye and Scottie P actors who were thus dispatched on that TV show. Other quips refer to Annie, Spider-Man and Bane from The Dark Knight Rises. The “family” members instinctively draw their language and values from the sitcom tradition. A Ned Flanders type inspires David’s strategy. 

The characters also draw on their actors’ personae. The awkward, inexperienced, seemingly gay boy Poulter played the hip gay brother on the TV series, Shameless.  The latter role sets up the possibility that Kenny might indeed provide the corrupt Mexican sheriff’s bribe. As Julia Roberts’ niece, Emma as Casey connects to Rose’s initial rejection of David’s proposal she do a Pretty Woman role for him. The blooper epilogue ends with the cast sneaking the theme from Aniston’s Friends series into the scene where they sing to TLC’s Waterfalls. This film assumes a knowing, sympathetic audience. Rose/Sarah is a smart inflection of Aniston’s persona, as it reminds her audience how sexy and beautiful she is (Take that, Brangelica!) even as she before our eyes matures into the role of mother, which we may see her taking more often now that she’s pregnant. She has come a long way from the rootless blonde of that TV classic. In another kind of metacinema both Sudeikis and Anniston break the fourth wall by gesturing to the audience. 

This film’s success is partly due to its inventive plot, winning performances and hilarious script. But it also reads as a barometer of its time. Those film references assume an audience with shared film and TV experience and knowledge. Because the drug on which the plot turns is grass, and Sudeikis is a virtuous dealer (e.g., he won’t sell to minors, he helps the kids in distress), the film has no problem in letting our heroes get away unpunished for their huge smuggling attempt. The film reads the public’s distinction between grass and hard drugs on the scale of danger and criminality.  

It’s also au courant in stretching the range of ”normal” both in what constitutes family values and sexual identity. Here you don’t have to be born and raised together to make a family. It’s enough to come to care for each other and to want to stay connected. This is a story of people who made themselves -- out of the most unpromising material -- into a family. That’s just as good as being born into one.