We're the Millers Movie

Maybe leaving Saturday Night Live wasn’t such a bad idea for Jason Sudeikis after all. In the raunchy road-trip comedy We’re the Millers, the actor best known for his gonzo late-night riffs on Mitt Romney and Joe Biden proves that he can do more than just mug through five-minute skits. He may never become an A-list force at the box office on par with Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell, but he’s unlikely to pull a Joe Piscopo vanishing act. It certainly doesn’t hurt that in his first starring role, he’s paired with a hit-the-mark pro like Jennifer Aniston, who delivered one of her best — and bawdiest — turns alongside Sudeikis in 2011’s Horrible Bosses.

Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story), Millers centers on an aging Denver pot dealer (Sudeikis) who’s on the hook to his weaselly supplier (Ed Helms) for $43,000. To settle the debt, he has to smuggle a ”smidge” (in reality, several hundred pounds) of weed over the border from Mexico. As a cover he enlists his stripper neighbor (Aniston), a gutterpunk teen (Emma Roberts), and an Opielooking dork (scene-stealer Will Poulter) to pose as a square, RV-driving Cleaveresque family. Before it fizzles out with a predictably redemptive ending, Millers serves up some delightfully lewd laughs, such as Roberts teaching her ”brother” how to kiss as ”Mom” and ”Dad” cheer her on. While Aniston shows that she’s as deft on a stripper pole as she is with her sitcom-honed timing, Sudeikis wields his smart-ass sarcasm like a barbed weapon. And more often than not, it kills. B