THE GOODS

MOVIE REVIEW

THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL HARD

With a Saturday afternoon free, me and my lovely wife head to the local cinema, I mean the ONLY cinema within a fifty-mile radius here, and have decided on THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL HARD.

Why, of all things, would we chose this over "G-FORCE" or "THE PROPOSAL"? Because of JEREMY PIVEN, that's why. We wanted more than the scant thirty minutes we get of him each week on HBO's "ENTOURAGE".

Piven plays "Don Ready", a pinch hitter for the car sales industry. He and his team seek out failing auto dealers who need to make big sales in a squeeze.

There are lots of familiar faces in the cast: James Brolin owns the failing dealership. Ed Helms, of "The Office" and "Hangover" fame plays Paxton Harding, Brolin's future son-in-law, an adult boy-band singer (he calls it a "man-band"). David Koechner, Kathryn Hahn, and Ving Rhames round out the hit squad sales crew.

The storyline is quite obvious: failing car dealership contracts with super-sales team, the ride is up and down but they come out on top. You're not paying for an intricate or surprising concept here.

Instead, your dollars go into ninety minutes of a few good jokes, some raunch, and two "sitcom-gone-sad" moments that are quickly over (thank god). In all, if we divide the ninety minutes by the $12.00 ticket fee, we get $0.13 cents a minute of entertainment. It's better than calling someone for that rate and listening them use the "F-word", as much as used in the film, but with less pizzazz.

For this "newbee" screenwriter, there were a few things learned. Before the show started I wanted to see if it would coincide with the "ACT" formula for acts 1, 2a, 2b, and 3. I used 22 minutes as a rough estimate and the change of acts came out on perfect timing.

Also, casting is everything, not that I will have choices in that department, but if Piven calls me for a role, it's on!

The audience loves knowing something the other's don't, of course. This is played up when Piven believes a young salesman might be his long, lost son, but he isn't.

The unexpected: it helps to bring up many unexpected moments, even in act three. That whole portion doesn't need to seem focused around one resolution with an obvious answer.

As far as the script, I think there was a lot of tinkering and ad-libbing. The screenwriting team of STOCK and STEMPSON did get the full writing credit, however.

So all in all, the film validated a few thoughts for me: stay with the ACT formula, hope big elements get attached, and get full writing credit...unless the film sucks, and I'll leave that opinion up to you.