The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
2009
Director: Neal Brennan
Writer: Andy Stock, Rick Stempson
Starring: Jeremy Piven, Ving Rhames
Synopsis: 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. Ving Rhames  and Kathryn Hahn co-star in this comedy from “Chappelle’s Show” producer Neal Brennan.

I think Jeremy Piven is great and this role is cut just for him. It is classic Piven no doubt about it. Yes it was cheesy, yes every character in this is a caricature of characters from crappy 80′s comedies, and I thought it was hilarious.

So many elements are at play here that it’s hard to know where to start. One of my favorite subplots involves one of the members of Piven’s team desperately wants to have sex with the lot owners son. Problem is he is 10 years old in a 40 year old mans body. This was played quite well and I got a good laugh out of it. I also wished I was a 10 year old boy in a 40 year old mans body because I would have hit that.

This does have all the elements of the movies that were so very popular in the 80′s. Family car dealership is facing foreclosure, evil rich dealership tries to buy them out so they can run them out of town, they have to sell all the cars in a weekend to stay in business, blah blah blah. You know where all this is going, you’ve seen this movie a hundred times but The Goods delivers.

There are a ton of bit players who do a great job in this movie. You will recognize a lot of them from such great television shows as Arrested Development and Community. I had no idea Will Ferrel was in this movie and I’m glad. I don’t like Will Ferrell and if I had known he was in it I would not have watched it. Even he was funny for the first time ever.

It’s fun, it’s campy, it’s formulaic, and it’s hilarious. I can’t do Kurosawa Criterion films every night and this makes for a good break.