Masterminds Review
A stupid movie about stupid people and their stupid stupidity… But it’s actually kind of pretty good…
Masterminds Review – Jack Fitzpatrick
There’s something satisfying about watching crime in media. Something fascinating about seeing how it all goes down – how criminals could potentially get away with things such as massive bank heists or the like and how the law reacts to these things in response. But ultimately, it’s all about the aftermath… The downfall; “Breaking Bad’“taught us that a life of crime wasn’t worth it. “The Town” showed us how it’s done realistically. And many other films and shows have all presented us with crime time and time again. Crime has always been and probably always will be a popular theme throughout fiction. And I think it’s because when watching something such as this, you begin to feel a part of it. It’s not something that you truly relate to literally, but it’s something that you understand. You begin to feel a part of it and know why a person might turn to these criminal actions… You even sort of end up rooting for them despite their – what could be considered – villainous acts. “Masterminds“ though never quite reaches this level of realism of maturity… No, “Masterminds” is purely in this for comedic purposes, but in the end I’d say that there isn’t really anything wrong with that.
But yeah, this movie was undeniably pretty stupid. Loosely based on a true story we follow Zach Galifanakis’ character as he gets sorta tricked / sorta persuaded in to performing an act of robbery from the armored truck company in which he’s employed. Galifanakis basically gets screwed over and the rest of the film involves his character being on the run from the law as well as what’s going on with the other characters around the robbery including; His crush played by Kristen Wiig, the ringleader of the whole operation played by Owen Wilson and a whole cast of other comedic actors playing various roles.
To put it simply; “Masterminds” is just not that great…
But the thing about it is that I don’t think that anybody was expecting a masterpiece – I sure as hell wasn’t anyway – and it really wasn’t that bad either. It was fairly funny when it tried and even got some laughs out of me, even if the humor was quite… juvenile at times. Something that I do appreciate about the film though is that it never tries to be anything more than it is; A straight up comedy movie. It doesn’t try to have a clever story, it doesn’t feel the need to involve complex or unnecessary subplots and drama and it doesn’t try to be anything more than it is.
“Masterminds” is just a harmless comedy, and knew it… Even if some of that comedy did fall flat throughout the film from time to time. Either way in the end I’d say that the movie remained to be just a silly comedy and nothing more. And in that way, it was just kind of nice to sit down and watch an extremely casual movie such as this one. So despite quite a few coats of mediocrity which surely covered Masterminds, I felt that the film could mostly be forgiven and was even rather enjoyable.
However, it wasn’t all forgivable and it certainly wasn’t all enjoyable; Much of the comedy that the film relied a little bit much on revolved around simply embarrassing elements such as literal fart jokes and many, many moments of brainless slapstick humor accompanied by “hilarious” shouting from whichever character the film decides is an idiot at that moment. At times the attempt at gags could truly be cringe worthy, and it was sort of disappointing in a movie that I think could have done better with a little more time and care put in to it.
“Masterminds” though, truly relied on its’ cast throughout and sometimes it just didn’t work; Relying on Zach Galifanakis having dumb hair and looking silly is just not an effective joke. Same goes for Kristen Wiig being painfully awkward (intentionally so for laughs) or the wacky and over the top antics of any number of characters throughout the film. And it’s here where we see that Masterminds truly brings just about nothing new to the game; We’ve seen Zach Galifanakis being a big idiot before, we’ve seen Kristen Wiig being awkward before, we’ve seen Leslie Jones yelling nonsense (Though she’s actually surprisingly held back in this film to be honest) and for the love of god we’ve seen Kate Mckinnon being quirky. (FUCK I get it Kate Mckinnon, you’re the weirdest god damn person ever, give it a rest.)
The performances are so over the top as well as the general tone of the film that at times the whole thing begins to honestly just feel like a cartoon. Often not shying away from the wacky or zany “Masterminds” at the very least embraces its unrealism. In fact the film does an undeniably good job of probably being one of the most unrealistic films that heavily claims itself to be based on a true story. Though I’m not exactly sure how accurate to life this film truly is. (I’d guess probably not very. Way to do my research.) But that being said, the story behind it was inherently interesting enough already. In this way, it does make me question why the film felt the need to make so much up when the story itself was already quite unbelievable and over the top in reality to begin with. Though that being said, when it comes to such idiotic characters it can become hard to distinguish truth from fiction; Perhaps the people really were all this stupid? I guess I can’t really say for sure. It’s not like I was there. Though, I doubt it.
Another mentionable aspect to the film is just how busy it is. I was sort of pleasantly surprised by the sheer amount of events portrayed in what could be considered quite a short run-time. I mean, it’s quite a long story when you consider how simple it all is. One thing consistently leads to another and throughout the film I was personally intrigued about finding out where it was all going to end up – even if it was honestly fairly predictable. Throughout the film we also meet NUMEROUS characters, many whom all have their own small arcs and who are all at least likable in their own right. One thing I can say about this film is that it definitely doesn’t lack personality. “Masterminds” is respectably in-depth for such an inherently stupid movie.
Speaking of likable characters, I personally have to say that I found Jason Sudeikis’ Hitman to easily be the highlight of the film for me. I actually found him quite hilarious. I’d say that he pretty much stole the show and every time he was on-screen I found myself laughing at the undeniable ludicrousy of it all. You can tell that he, among the rest of the cast were able to have some fun with their characters and relished in playing extremely exaggerated human beings.
In the end though, “Masterminds” was just totally forgettable. There’s nothing in it worth salvaging and it’s far from anything we haven’t seen before. However, I still had a good enough time throughout, and so can’t say I really disliked it. It wasn’t particularly great or special, but it really was far from the worst movie I’ve seen this year. (*Ahem.. Cough Cough.. GRIMSBY)
“Masterminds” provided a surprising number of laughs, presented some genuinely likable characters (Even if they were kind of cartoons) and in the end was a completely harmless comedy that I can’t say I ever felt angry towards. I initially didn’t go in with the highest of expectations and probably because of that, I ended up coming out of the cinema satisfied. It’s a stupid movie, but it is fun. “Masterminds” is probably exactly what you think it’s going to be, so if you feel like relaxing and laughing at some pretty dumb stuff, well you might even like it. If you feel like being more mature and are looking for something with a little more class – best avoid this feature.
Time to arbitrarily rate the movie! I give it a … uh… 6 I guess? 6.5? Yeah something along those lines. Let’s say 6.5 shall we? It was an ok movie that was perfectly fine for what it was and I kinda liked it.
