Unfinished Business is an interesting movie to say the least. What caught my interest was the parts played by Dave Franco (James Franco’s little brother) and Vince Vaughn. I am fans of both of these actors, and although the movie didn’t look that great to begin with I figured I’d give it a try out of respect for these two men. The trailers and posters make the film look like the stereotypical party movie aimed at a younger audience looking to get their project x fix. This is not really the case for this film. The party scenes are very limited and only equal about 15 to 20 minutes of actual screen time. The film is about Dan Trunkman, played by Vince Vaughn, who gets fired from his job (they don’t actually explain what he really does) and seeks to get revenge on his employer by starting his own business in the same field. Joined by Dave Franco and Tom Wilkinson, Dan Trunkman finally lands a deal worth a lot of money that will save his start-up company. Upon arriving to shake hands on the deal he finds out the client has backed off and is negotiating with two companies, Dan Trunkman and his current employer. So the rest of the film is Dan Trunkman and his crew pulling out all the bells and whistles to land the client over his former company.
The movie itself is very strangely directed and is all over the place. It’s like they couldn’t decide what type of film it wanted to be. Mixed in with many of the comedic moments you’ll get some serious life lesson moments and just a lot of awkward unfunny moments. For example there’s a few times in the movie where Vince Vaughn’s son is being bullied and teased at school. When it comes to these scenes the movie takes a dramatic turn from funny to serious. These scenes almost feel like an anti-bullying ad campaign as they talk about the seriousness of bullying and get away from the comedic nature of the film. That being said the movie is fairly funny, and by that I mean I probably laughed out loud about 6 or 7 times which isn’t very much. Most of the comedy actually came from Dave Franco which was a surprise to me. He had a lot of funny one-liners that brought the film up from terrible, to watchable. As the movie progresses however the line between awkward funny and seriousness becomes very blurred and the film starts to nosedive. The last 30 minutes feel rushed and very unfunny to the point it feels like they knew the movie would bomb so they tried to save as much money as possible by finishing up production early. Overall there are decent performances from Vince Vaughn and Dave Franco but the rest of the supporting cast seems miscasted which result in many boring and awkward scenes. If I had to describe it in one word, I would call it “Boring”. Don’t watch it unless someone has a gun to your head.
5 Stars out of 10
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