We're the Millers

Rawson Marshall Thurber’s 2013 comedy came out of a development run lasting about a decade. The project started in 2002, New Line bought the script in 2004, Peter Cattaneo signed to direct in 2005, Will Arnett entered talks for the lead that year, Steve Buscemi was reported aboard in 2006, and the file sat until 2010. Thurber signed in 2011, Jason Bateman was attached two months later, and Aniston and Sudeikis only joined in April 2012. What is on screen matches that history: a premise engineered first and characters second. The second point concerns the ending and is easy to miss. In the outtakes running under the credits, Sudeikis, Emma Roberts and Will Poulter serenade Aniston with the theme song from Friends. Thurber says he and Sudeikis cooked the prank up together, that the cameras happened to be rolling, and that Aniston laughed. The most talked about moment is therefore not in the script, and skipping the credits means never seeing it. Filming took place in Wilmington, North Carolina and in New Mexico. Made for thirty seven million dollars, it took two hundred seventy million worldwide. A fit if you do not mind humour drawing its force from repetition and embarrassment. Not a fit if an hour and a half of sexual and body based jokes wears you down.