Masterminds (2016)

I haven't laughed this hard in a long time! Loved it! We constantly quote this movie now.

Considering all the acting talent involved, this should have been hilarious. It was mildly amusing, mostly due to the over-the-top acting by Kate McKinnon. Zach Galifianakis is David Ghantt, a real life Loomis Armored Car employee who robbed the company of $17.3m in 1997. Galifianakis plays him as a kind of hillbilly rube. Kristen Wiig is an ex-employee who pretends to be sweet on Ghantt to get him to steal the money. Owen Wilson is the leader of the heist. Leslie Jones is an FBI agent investigating the crime. Jason Sudeikis is a hit man sent to kill Ghantt. Finally, Kate McKinnon is Ghantt's crazy girlfriend, Jandice. She steals the show.None of this really holds up to much scrutiny. The plot is silly (albeit based on a true story). None of the actors seems to be taking it seriously and the movie never really picks up steam when it should. It was enjoyable with Sudeikis and McKinnon standing out, but overall this was a wasted opportunity. The film, Logan Lucky, with a similar theme of a heist by a bunch of amateurs is much better.

This film is like the Saturday night live version of a true story that is a bit funny to start with. The DVD extras had the true story told by the thief and the FBI. The whole film is uniformly crazy acted with total lack of serious. The film makers mostly exaggerated what happened in real life but they continued the story differently than reality at the point where the thief was to be killed by the mastermind. It was the second biggest heist of the USA history. The red head thief actually sounds and looks a lot like a friend of mine. Funny.

I watched this not knowing what to expect and found myself laughing a lot and enjoying it thoroughly. I was surprised to see that it was not better received (not too surprised though, as it seems only the most popular movies get any positive reviews and there tends to be a bandwagon effect). Based on true story of one of the largest cash heists in history, it follows the crazy story of its perpetrators and their attempts to avoid being caught. Zach Galifianakis and other cast members are hilarious. The makers of the film obviously took pains to add little details to every scene that really add to the comedy. In the beginning, for example, there is a scene of awkwardfamilyphotos.com style engagement photos that is so great. Plot twists as the film progressed to its conclusion kept the story interesting. There were some parts that were hard to buy, but it was a comedy after all. It's on Netflix currently.