UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Dave Franco, Tom Wilkinson
Writer: Steve Conrad
Director: Ken Scott

After closing a significant business deal for his company, Dan Trunkman (Vaughn) is told by his Sales Manager Chuck Portnoy (Sienna Miller) that he'll be taking a 5% pay cut. Understandably miffed, Dan walks and start his own rival company, taking older colleague Tim (Wilkinson) and man-child Mike (Franco) with him. Mike isn't even with the company but had showed up for an interview with a box full of office supplies "to show confidence". Anyway, the three of them set out to take on the big guys and twelve months later it looks as though they've clinched a massive contract, edging out Miller's mob. However, via some business chicanery that the script doesn't really let us in on, there are complications and the deal looks in jeopardy. Time to pull out all of the stops and woo the client, which involves a trip to Berlin. Culture clash jokes ahoy!

It's a shame but these days I tend to approach Vince Vaughn comedies with a certain amount of trepidation. I like the guy and he has an easy-going, amiable screen presence. I want his movies to be funny and yet so often I'm disappointed. Unfortunately, for me, Unfinished Business turned out to be a laugh-free zone. I smiled twice in 91 minutes. No giggles and certainly no guffaws. It must have looked hilarious on the page and to be honest there's potential in the situations into which it drops our trio of underdogs. The bottom line is that it just isn't funny.

Vince Vaughn is undoubtedly very good as playing the sort of everyman role he has here and there's no question he has comic timing but he has absolutely nothing to work with here. The script pulls out all of the stops to make you like him and it throws in a tedious subplot which deals with the fallout of him being away from his wife and kids for so long (wife's getting stressed that he's away all of the time, son's being bullied, daughter hates school) but we don't need all of this stuff to be on his side, we were with him when Chuck was being horrible to him in scene one so all the family angle really does is weigh down the plot. I guess it does pad out the running time though...

Tom Wilkinson looks like he's enjoying his role as Tim but as far as character development goes all you get is a 67-year-old guy doing things that 67-year-old guys are not supposed to do (take drugs, swear like a trooper, hire "sex maids" - I'm not going to explain that last one because your imagination will come up with something funnier than the film does). It's not an unamusing idea but somehow his antics generate a sum total of zero chuckles.

Let's take a look at the character of Mike Pancake. Yes, he has a funny surname and if you like that gag you'll be able to experience it several times during this movie. From the get-go we're told that Mike doesn't function in anything approaching a normal way, he has no understanding of the meaning of various words, he doesn't know the difference between a square and a rectangle and he never graduated college. A short while later, that same Mike has contributed to a number of updated mathematical forecasts in a presentation that Dan will deliver to the client. Huh?

Outside of the main three protagonists, the remainder of the cast is given virtually sod all to do. Sienna Miller is wasted in a one-dimensional business bitch from Hell role. James Marsden shows up, behaves like a dick, disappears for a while, shows up again, behaves like a dick, disappears for a while....you get the idea. Nick Frost is at least given something resembling a character arc and he does at least make the most of the scraps he's given but he's not on screen enough to raise the level of the proceedings. His character is also gay so at one point he has to wear an outrageous outfit. If you like that gag, well, you're beyond help.

I'm not even going to get into the ins and outs of the business deal Trunkman is attempting to close, only that it involves "sworf" - off cuts of metal - and that the contractual elements of the agreement are like nothing I've ever heard of. That's my diplomatic way of saying that part of the plot is unbelievable crap. Oops, there goes the diplomacy. Never sit me down at a table to sort things out between two warring factions. Unlikely, I know, but...

One thing I will say is that Berlin looks a cool place to visit which makes me look forward to my trip there soon but that's all I really took from the movie. Like its protagonists, I just wanted the deal to be signed as quickly as possible so we could all go home. At one point about an hour in, Vince Vaughn looked worn down by the whole thing. I knew exactly how he felt.