The Goods: Live Hard Sell Hard

Product Description When asked to save a struggling auto dealership from bankruptcy, Jeremy Piven and his ragtag crew descend on a small California town to party and wreak havoc... and move some cars, in this outrageously funny comedy. Amazon.com Look out, Temecula, here comes Don Ready and his band of X-treme salesmen, rarin' to boost sales at a struggling car dealership over the course of a single hardcore weekend. That's the plan in The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, a scattershot comedy featuring fast-talking Jeremy Piven as the slippery Mr. Ready, who knows how to lay on the discounts, the free food, and the personal appearances by bottom-tier celebrities. He and his for-hire team (Ving Rhames, David Koechner, and Kathryn Hahn) have three days to clear the lot, or the owner (a game James Brolin) will lose his business. The movie's at its funniest when going for non sequitur craziness (best exemplified by the zany-creepy vibe between Hahn and Brolin's ten-year-old son, played by Rob Riggle, whose glandular condition makes him look like a strapping 35-year-old). Good folks score in drive-by bits: Ed Helms does his best fatuous jerk, Craig Robinson glowers as a grumpy DJ, and producer Will Ferrell gets an extended cameo during which he spends much of his time falling from a plane without a parachute. (He's funny enough that you wish his role weren't confined to a flashback and a fantasy sequence.) The central role is tailor-made for Piven's skills, and he's suitably revved-up, but ultimately the movie leaves him stranded by trying to have it both ways: it can't decide whether it's a totally put-on sketch comedy or a more-or-less sincere redemption story. That won't fly, and the movie sputters accordingly. --Robert Horton Stills from The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (Click for larger image)