We're the Millers (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2013)

This one right here is the very definition of an "afternoon movie". You may, like me - an easily diagnosable film fanatic - watch most movies in a dark, dungeon-like setting that promises the least social interaction possible, but it's movies like We're The Millers that are best viewed mid-day, with people walking in and out of the room and distractions abound. I started watching it for the first time half way through, my parents in the middle of watching it, and picked up the plot as things progressed; then caught the first half on the multiple rewatches that occur when simply looking for something to fill the big black void in the middle of my TV screen. It's lazy viewing; afternoons are lazy; "afternoon movie", get it? Despite this category being well known - even in the back of the minds of all the people who've never put much thought to it - critics still downrate movies like this on the basis they aren't as good as the much hyped auteur work (the equivalent of calling a McDonald's 'shit' because it doesn't compare with last week's gourmet dish). We're The Millers, rated on this separate little scale, ranks very high.

A movie where the characters were most likely thought up before the set-up that brings them together. Small time drug dealer David (Jason Sudeikis) gets mugged, putting him in trouble with his supplier (Ed Helms), so agrees to smuggle a "smidge" of weed back from Mexico. In need of a believable story he cobbles together a fake family out of Rose (Jennifer Aniston), Kenny (Will Poulter) and Casey (Emma Roberts) and sets off. The poster even gives each character their own personality tag: "drug dealer" "stripper" "runaway" and "virgin", hence four personalities clashing on a cross-Mexico road trip, all the while with drug dealers chasing them, another family driving alongside them, and in a vehicle which doubles as a constant threat of arrest.

I won't try and dissect any deep meaning for why I enjoyed this one: surely there should have been some rule about looking too deep into things which aim only as pure entertainment; afterall, good comedians know not to explain the joke - although then again, a great comedian could do it anyway and get a laugh. Movies like this, restrained mostly to the confines of an RV, depend mostly on chemistry. The gang of four here have it - each worthy of praise - although it's Sudeikis who's the revelation here. It's surprising he still hasn't got that many jobs in Hollywood yet, his personas as crazy enthusiastic as you could want from a comedy hero: he plays cocksure and confident almost in overdrive, in one scene I actually thought the gag was going to be that he'd smoked some of the weed due to an argument with the gang (or run into a coke dealer in a deleted scene, which would have been even more fitting). This movie works on like-ability alone, and going off the "afternoon movie" scale, that's about as recommendable as they come.