We’re the Millers has an old fashioned set up with a mature twist. Like so much American humor it is a situational comedy where characters continually find themselves in awkward positions and or places. The twist comes in the fact that the lead character is in fact a criminal.
David is a middle aged low level drug dealer. He has been making a living at it since he was in college. He has plenty of customers but hardly any friends. He is attracted to his stripper neighbor, Rose, but she has no interest in him. Another neighbor, Kenny, a teen age boy whose single mom went out for a drink two weeks ago and never came back, looks up to David who has little patience for him. One day Kenny gets David into trouble when he tries to save a young lady runaway named Casey from some muggers. They end up robbing David of his stash of marijuana as well as all of his cash he owes to a much bigger dealer, Brad.
To pay Brad back for the lost drugs and money, David agrees to smuggle, “a smidge” of weed into the United States from Mexico. His plan is to pose as a family so as to appear so innocent that no guard would think to search them at customs. He recruits Rose to be his wife and Kenny and Casey to be their children. They board an RV and make like the Millers, your average American family on vacation.
Of course nothing goes as planned. It starts with the fact that they mostly do not get along, at first. They then have to deal with the drug suppliers who get a tad upset when the Millers take someone else’s drugs. There is the other family traveling by RV that wants to get up close and highly personal with David and Rose. Then there is the spider that bites Kenny on his testicle, in one of the funniest scenes in the film.
Will Poulter as Kenny is a real treat as a teenage boy at the awkward stage of being as tall as a man but as innocent as a child. He is the most likable character on screen. He falls in love and is the first to admit that he truly needs the others in his life. Filming one scene must have made Poulter’s day, or year. It required him to kiss Roberts and Aniston over and over again.
Although this film is about illegal drug deals and smuggling, the heart of the film is about four loners coming together and forming a family. Almost immediately after they are first together they begin to argue. David thinks they are going to blow their cover, when in fact the arguing makes them seem all the more like a real family. Yes, it gets a bit gooey sweet, but it all comes together nicely with a message of how we all need someone to care about and care for us.
It is intended for us to like and want to see this “family” come together and succeed but that requires that we also kind of root for a large supply of drugs to make it into our country. Had this film been made before the new millennium, I bet they would have changed the character of David from the actual drug dealer to the brother or friend of the drug dealer who he has to save by doing the smuggling. In today’s world where marijuana is practically legal, we are not supposed to see David’s drug dealing as such a bad thing. Sure the film mentions several times that what is happening is illegal but we are never set up to do anything but like David and his manufactured family of drug smugglers.
That is where this film succeeds. All four leads are playing very likable caricatures. David is a drug dealer who is just too stubborn to admit he wants a friend. Rose is a stripper with morals who is tired of getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Although we never hear why, Casey is a runaway who puts up a brave front, but really just needs parents to look out for her. Kenny is also in need of guidance and is not in the least shy about showing it. Although the plot of drug smuggling, graphic sex talk and full frontal male nudity, if you count Kenny’s swollen testicle, make this a rated “R” film, at its heart is the very definition of family.
