The Goods – Live Hard, Sell Hard

by Spike Scarberry

The story in a sentence: A used car lot hires a freelance liquidation team in order to make enough money to keep the business running.

Some films are so good, they simply blow you away. Others make you wish that time machines existed, so you could physically regain the two hours you spent watching it.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard is closer to the latter.

Summing up the plot into one cohesive paragraph is difficult, as “The Goods” is a film that thrives on the ludicrous. Know before you begin that this is not a movie that tries to make sense. And that’s the film’s only saving grace.

Basically, the story follows Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) who is brought in to liquidate the stock of a used car lot during the 4^th of July weekend. Halfway through the sale, a competitor offers to buy the lot, and the owner who hired Ready agrees, telling Don that he and his team will be paid in full. Ready quickly renounces this and states that if he cannot sell all of the cars on the lot by the end of the weekend, then the competitor can have the car lot and Ready makes nothing.

…

Yes, I am quite aware that makes no sense.

Along the way, our minds are subjugated to a number of ridiculous sub-plots, which I will list for your reading enjoyment.

1) A member of Ready’s team Babs Merrick (played by Kathryn Hahn) falls in love with the car owner’s son, who is a ten-year-old boy stuck in the body of a 40-year-old man.

2) Ready himself falls head over heels for the boss’s daughter, who is currently engaged to the son of her father’s competitor. Her fiance (Alan Thicke) is the member of a boy band and wants to convert the car lot into a practice space.

3) Jimmy Newsome, another member of Don’s squad, admits to having never made love to a woman. He’s not a virgin, mind you. As he says: “I’ve done 3-ways, 4-ways, menage-a-tois, menage sept, menage seises… I’ve sixty-nined, eighty-nined… one hundred fourteened. Golden, diamond and platinum showers”, just never “made love” to a woman.

Oh, and who can forget the dreaded “Albuquerque Incident”, a severely traumatizing moment which Ready himself finds hard to put into words. Whenever someone inquires about what happened on that dreadful day, Ready simply responds: “YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT QUERQUE!”

When you boil it down, “The Goods” story simply falls flat. The plot is so bad, in fact, that I would love to give it a negative rating.

Except that a lot of the jokes are pretty funny, assuming that you jive with the film’s outrageous nature.

Will Ferrell, who actually doubles as the film’s co-producer, makes several hilarious cameos, which make the film insanely more watchable. If you generally enjoy Will Ferrell films, then more than likely you will at least find some of the film’s randomness funny. Hell, if you think the idea of Will Ferrell shouting: “Man, I wish I could get away from this dildo!”, at the top of his lungs is funny, then you’ll find some mild enjoyment from watching this.

Let’s face it, Army of Darkness did this kind of comedy so much better. I’d even reckon to say that Idiocracy or Step Brothers are probably better movies than this film. However, if you possess the ability to turn off your brain and block out all of the lunacy that this film has, you’ll probably find it slightly entertaining. This is a film that doesn’t take itself seriously.