Hey look, it's another movie where Vince Vaughn phones in his performance as well-meaning lug with a heart of gold. Who happens to be really, super-duper tall. Okay, he can't really do anything about the height but at some point it would be great to see Vaughn put some effort into one his comedies, or at least play a different sort of character. He certainly doesn't in Unfinished Business, a lazy road trip Euro-comedy that is about as much fun as a conference call. Actually, if I could have endured this film over a conference call it would have been preferable.
Unfinished Business seems to want to be a few different things but never accomplishes any of them. On the one hand, screenwriter Steve Conrad is adept at looking at the impact a career has on a man's self-worth. He wrote The Pursuit of Happyness about a homeless man who needed a job to care for his son; he also wrote The Weather Man about a man whose job drove him crazy; and he also wrote The Secret Life of Walter Mitty about a man who used fantasy to escape his boring job. There are individual moments in Unfinished Business when you can sense Conrad wants to tell a similar story, but he runs up against the need to put Vaughn in a dopey comedy first because that's what people pay to see him in. 
The premise isn't half bad with Vaughn playing Dan Trunkman, a salesman in the swarf (metal shavings) business. After getting screwed by the company CEO (Sienna Miller in about her 10th straight thankless role), Dan pulls a Jerry Maguire and quits to start his own business. His fiery exit speech attracts a couple of coworkers. Tim (Tom Wilkinson) is an aging horn dog forced to retire because he's too old. And then there's the unfortunately named Mike Pancake (Dave Franco), a shy, terminally awkward neophyte who has no experience in just about anything. It's a business doomed for failure, but Dan can't let that happen. He's got a family to support; a loyal wife and two troubled kids, the son is being bullied in school and needs to go to an expensive private institution. Don't worry about all that stuff, though. While Conrad seems to be drawing a connection between school and workplace pressures, it's only to fill time until he can get to the next lame sex gag. 
When Dan somehow manages to score a big contract that must be finalized in a handshake deal with a douchey guy played by James Marsden (always best as a douche), the trio must go on a business trip full of wacky misadventures. Or not. The thing about Unfinished Business is that it's remarkably tame for the most part. Sure, there's plenty of vulgarity and an abundance of sex talk, mostly from Wilkinson who uses the word "wheelbarrow" more than a man should, but it's all pretty standard stuff. Certainly it doesn't reach the wild and crazy heights most would expect from Vaughn in a set up like this. How can it not be raunchy? How can it not push the boundaries of good taste? Very easily, apparently. The problem is that Conrad really doesn't do "edgy" kinds of comedy, so his screenplay here is never up to the task. Other than an admittedly very funny (and disturbing) scene involving glory holes and Mike Pancake shaking hands with a penis, Unfinished Business has little in the way of laughs. 
Chances are you saw all of the funniest parts in the trailers, anyway. All of them involve Franco who has his brother's chameleonic ability to make the most out of every wacked out character he plays. Wilkinson is a seasoned dramatic actor but he's also a very funny guy and, God bless him, he tries so hard find nuance in Tim's grey-haired sexual deviant. But there's nothing to do when his best gag involves buying a sex maid who goes to the wrong hotel room. *snooze* I'd say he was fortunate to have avoided this week's The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (his character died in the first film), but that decrepit comedy was terrible, too. And Vaughn...well, his performance is just lazy. We've seen variations of this role so often from him (most recently in Delivery Man, also directed by Ken Scott) that he doesn't even seem to be trying any more. He doesn't appear to be having all that much fun, either. At least when Adam Sandler drops a comedy goose egg we know he's enjoying another paid vacation with his pals. Fortunately, Vaughn has an action flick in Term Life and HBO's True Detective as motivation to put in more effort than Unfinished Business called for.
Rating: 2 out of 5
