Writer: Lai Swee Wei

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Effects: NA
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Watch this if you liked: “Cadillac Man”, “Used Cars”

Lead actor Jeremy Piven plays Don Ready, an enthusiastic car salesman who doesn't just work for one auto dealership. Together with three other talented car salespeople, they instead go to various dealerships all around for brief periods of time when being called upon to help turn their business around. United, they are an indestructible team that is able to sell anything and everything, including your dirty old gym socks if they have to.

In the town of Temecula, a used car company called Selleck Motors owned by Ben Selleck (James Brolin) is on a verge of bankruptcy. You'll see why as their group of car salesmen are terribly incompetent and in need for some motivation. When asked for help, Don and his ragtag group heads to the location in high spirits of another successful car sell-out. Once they arrive, Selleck's family and the foursome begin to have strange liaisons: Ben Selleck spends most of the time flirting with Don's balding sidekick, Brent (David Koechner), Don tries to charm Ben's engaged daughter, Ivy (Jordana Spiro), while the only lady in Don's group, Babs (Kathryn Hahn) has her eyes locked on Ben's son (Rob Riggle), a man-sized 10-year-old similar to Robin Williams character in "Jack" (1996). Apart from that, there's also Ivy's fiancee, Paxton Harding (Ed Helms) who is a spoiled grown-up in a "man band", as he'd like to call it.

Attending strip clubs is a routine for the group, where nothing beats eating breakfast with topless ladies dancing right in front of you - yea, right. Honestly, it seemed like an odd placing in the movie and wasn't necessary with its already R rated dialogue. With that aside, the gang are on a mission to sell off over 200 cars in one weekend during the Fourth of July celebration. Using various schemes and tricks up their sleeves, innocent customers interestingly fall victim to their excellent persuasion skills, which admittedly is a pleasure to watch.

However, the comic banter just doesn't pack a punch to get you laughing like a donkey, but more like tiny chuckles. It tries to be funny, but it always ends up falling flat. Jeremy Piven does well as Don Ready, with leadership capabilities demanding that he'd be the centre of attention. But the romance between Don and Ivy is so pathetic that it's not even worth calling romance. Probably the best outcome out of it is when Don's heart is broken over Ivy's one-night-stand act with him. Will Ferrell makes his cameo playing the spirit of Don's friend and makes leaves no impression on the audience with his "dead" performance (no pun intended).

All of the characters are amusing at some point, however the humour and progression of the story just doesn't cut it. Overall, it was a hardly memorable. Meantime, if you are going to watch it, keep an eye out on the African American deejay who doesn't like being told what to play. At least he's entertaining even at such limited screen time.

Cinema Online, 23 December 2009