Ask yourself this: When was the last time Vince Vaughn played a different character? Don’t get me wrong, I love Vince Vaughn. Very charming. Very clever. Very tall. But it’s reaching the point where “lazy Vince Vaughn comedy” is becoming a tautology.
In Unfinished Business he plays the now too-familiar big-hearted, almost-tragic, somewhat-noble hero who always struggles against the trials of life, often getting in his own way, an everyman who stumbles through a willfully immature chaos – featuring a surprising number of breasts – to succeed almost in spite of himself. Sound familiar?
There’s nothing wrong with that. Formula lies at the heart of much of the world’s greatest storytelling. But the trade off for following formula is working harder, not just coming up with a new style of wild party montage.
Unfinished Business is just lazy. It takes the easy option every time – the first gag conceived for a set up, the simplest plot solutions, the choices that require the least change in any of the characters or their world.
Only the original canvas shows any real imagination, if fractionally misguided. Vaughn is father-of-two Dan Trunkman who bravely quits his job in protest to go out on his own in the sworf trade (that’s the use of metal shavings) joined by Tom Wilkinson as an elderly wannabe-deviant and Dave Franco as a surprisingly dim-witted novice who we later learn is actually mentally handicapped. Because that’s always funny.
The result is a lazy film that contains more than a few lazy laughs but will ultimately only amuse those thrilled by boobs staring at breasts, with a bit of glory hole humour for balance and ‘edge’.
Unfinished Business is unfortunately bland.
‘Unfinished Business’ Movie Times
