Unfinished Business: Film Review

Unfinished Business: Film Review

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Dave Franco, Tom Wilkinson, Sienna Miller, Nick Frost, James Marsden
Director: Ken Scott

Re-teaming director Ken Scott with his star of Delivery Man Vince Vaughn isn't quite the magic touch you'd perhaps be expecting in this latest.

Vaughn is a brow-beaten Dan Trunkman, a minerals salesman who decides the plans of his boss Chuck (Miller) to restructure is a bridge too far and walks out. The problem is Trunkman needs a job and spotting two fellow ex-employees in the car park (Tim and Mike aka Tom Wilkinson and Dave Franco), the group forms their own splinter company.

A year later, and Trunkman is chasing a deal which could see them beat their final boss - if they can just get some face-time with a big boss in Europe...

So the trio sets off to secure the handshake - despite the G8, a gay fetish event, Oktoberfest, and a marathon taking place at the same time in Berlin where the boys need to go.

Unfinished Business is a film whose title says it all.

The scrappy non-comedy cum drama reeks of inconclusive writing, an inability to know what it wants to be (Is it comedy? No, as there's not enough funny in it. Is it sentimental drama? Nope, because that side is under-cooked too) and a central trio of leads who just really don't have what it takes.

If you've ever wanted to see a film where Dave Franco plays dumb and gets off on seeing naked breasts or a flick where Tom Wilkinson demands to see more "titty" from an overweight sex maid that he ordered, makes a filthy Iron Man pun and does ecstasy, then this is the film for you. Equally, if you've ever wanted to see Nick Frost in a leather clad outfit doing business from a toilet cubicle, then rush off because this film clearly floats your boat.

The problem is that Unfinished Business could have actually made something of itself if it had decided what it wanted to be - you soon get tired of Wilkinson's overtly sexual banter and Franco's innate stupidity (it's never quite explored why he's as dumb as he is and it's frankly, embarrassing) and the raunch that the poster would promise is never remotely delivered. It's the tamest, lamest EuroTrip ever.

So, what are you left with?

Bizarrely and perhaps to its credit, Vaughn plays it all straight, with an air of a man about to crack in a mid-life crisis with his James Corden lookalike son being bullied and his family struggling for cash.

If it were a drama, then there could have been something of the sincerity that the father / family scenes strive for (even if they are a little after school special) and occasionally achieve. If it had been a look at the desperations and struggles of a man teetering on the edge in a society and work-force that's savage, then it would have hit something.

Instead, Unfinished Business is a film that squanders everything; it's an excruciatingly unfunny journey that hits none of the highs on its route and manages to rankle from its Jerry Maguire-esque beginnings right to its very end.

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