By Emilio Frenk
Director: Jared Hess
Cast: Zach Galifianakis, Owen Wilson, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones and Jason Sudeikis.
Rating: Average
Jared Hess, director of “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Nacho Libre” brings his latest comedy “Masterminds” and what started as an interesting comedy in the became boring.
Based on real events, the movie takes place in North Carolina where a vault supervisor from “Loomis Fargo” David Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis) has a regular life and is about to get married with her girlfriend Jandice (Kate McKinnon).
Everything will change for David when her former co-worker Kelly Campbell(Kristen Wiig) convinces David on stealing from the vault 17 million dollars in cash. David agrees at the end and Kelly ensambles a team formed by her friend Steve Chambers (Owen Wilson) and his crew and they will perform the robbery of “Loomis Fargo” becoming one of the largest heists in the country.
The major problem that I found in “Masterminds” was that after the first act of the film became repetive and predictable. The movie had a solid first act and it was being very funny but everything went downhill.
Zach Galifianakis, who I consider one of the funniest men in the business stopped being funny after a while and I was getting desperate and bored to see him perform the same stunts over and over again.
The script written by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer and Emily Spivery was another thing that didn´t work and the jokes were not funny and for a movie like this the timing plays a huge role and after the robbery takes place I didn’t see that.
Jared Hess knows how to direct this kind of movies. We saw it in both Nacho Libre and Napoleon Dynamite where the characters not only were funny and both movies worked. Not this time and it’s a real shame because not only the movie had potential to become a great comedy due to the director and cast who has some of biggest actors in comedy but the script needed work.
Kristen Wigg is one of my favorite comedy actresses and I consider it one of the most talented and we have seen her giving memorable performances in movies like “Bridesmaids” and most recently “Ghostbusters”; here she has very funny moments which one involves a sort of a cat fight she has with the character of Kate McKinnon which was very funny. Still this was one ofthe few funny moments of the movie.
“Masterminds” is one of the biggest dissapointments in comedy this year due to the direction and story that were weak from the second act to the end.