'Unfinished Business' Feels Incomplete

The movie starts out with Daniel Trunkman (Vince Vaughn) arguing with his boss Chuck (Sienna Miller) about a 5% pay decrease. He refuses to walk with her and ends up quitting his job and starts his own firm called Apex Solutions.

His two associates are Timothy (Tom Wilkinson), who has been laid off for being too old for his job and Mike Pancake (Dave Franco), who just finished his interview at Trunkmans ex-company.

The trio starts their office, located in a Dunkin Doughnuts, and stays there for over a year. Trunkmans business goes down hill until one day they think they have scored a big deal with a German company and fly to Portland and then to Berlin for the shake, which will seal the deal.

While everything seems to have fallen perfectly into place, we see that it is not a happily ever after. We have Trunkman striving to support his family and send his son to private school so that his son wont be bullied. Timothy wants to divorce his wife but at the same time make sure shes taken care of financially. Then theres Mike, who is socially awkward and desperately needs a confidence boost.

This German deal is really important to all three of them and. Of course nothing can be so perfect, right? Enter Chuck. After traveling to Portland, they find out that Chuck is also there to negotiate the same deal with the very same company.

Then they all have to travel to Berlin to present their numbers and see who gets the deal. However, their time in Berlin is somehow in the middle of some random protest, Oktoberfest and a large gay festival. There is some explicit nudity thrown in completely unnecessarily.

This movie offers some good messages but as Trunkman tries to save his company, he lies to his wife (June Diane Raphael) about how much money he has and about trying to be there for his two children, Paul (Britton Sear) and Bess (Ella Anderson). With Timothy trying to get some of his youth back and Mike trying hard be useful and to make people take him seriously, you are left wondering what message was there in this movie to start with.

Director Ken Scott and script writer Steve Conrad have brought in too many characters with too many stories and tried to connect too many strings.

The creators are throwing too many things at the wall and hope that it all sticks. This movie has some great moments and some really meaningful messages but it all gets lost in the jumbled stories and side stories that take place.

Too many cooks spoil the broth and that is exactly what happens in this movie. It simply has too many stories clashing with one another and too many characters coming into the picture.

Its a commendable effort, but Unfinished Business is a film that is best caught on TV or a date-less Friday night.

ONLY RECOMMENDED: If youre bored and want to watch something to pass time or for fun.

Source: http://www.newuniversity.org/2015/03/entertainment/unfinished-business-feels-incomplete/

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Movie Review: 'Unfinished Business'

By Bill WineKYW Newsradio 1060

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) Unfinished Business is a comedy about a business trip that gets by, despite tripping over its own business.

Vince Vaughn stars as salesman Dan Trunkman, a St. Louis husband and father of two who quits his corporate job following a pay cut (as dictated by his tough-cookie boss, oddly named Chuck Portnoy, played by Sienna Miller).

So Trunkman starts his own business, called Apex Select.

(2 stars out of 4)

The two people who accept his offer to join him in a new venture are played by Tom Wilkinson and Dave Franco, the former facing forced retirement, the latter facing continued unemployment.

A year later, they travel to Portland, Maine, and then to Berlin, Germany, to close their companys first big make-or-break-the-business deal.

But when they arrive at their destination, they discover that Dans ex-employer, Chuck, is competing for the same deal and has been going after the same clients (two of whom are played by James Marsden and Nick Frost).

Dan knows h**l have to win back the clients, but the travel itinerary comes apart at the seams when the hopeful travelers find themselves sidetracked by everything from Oktoberfest to a gay fetish festival to a global economic summit.

Canadian director Ken Scott (Sticky Fingers, Starbuck), who previously collaborated with Vince Vaughn on the enjoyable comedy Delivery Man, works from an inconsistent screenplay by Steve Conrad, who wrote the script for 2013s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

The script lacks narrative momentum, and evokes smiles rather than laughs, trotting out set pieces as if in a parade, and allowing the characters to behave more or less arbitrarily at times, going for the easy gag at the expense of the believability and integrity of the piece.

And neither Scott nor Conrad manages to explain just what kind of company our trio of protagonists have or exactly what they do. So we dont take their predicament as seriously as we might have if we were clued in.

Still, Unfinished Business gives Vaughn a chance to give his trademark motormouth a rest and deliver a persuasive, likable, underplayed protagonist who shows us his sensitive side as he deals with his kids problems and helps us over the rough spots.

And Wilkinson and Franco do a bit more with their supporting characters than is there on the page.

This is a mixed bag, to be sure, and could have used a rewrite or two. But it gets points for not being formulaic even if the cocktail of raunch and sentiment that it pours into our glass doesnt taste quite right.

And it doesnt bore us either.

So well book a trip to 2 stars out of 4 for Unfinished Business, a shaky, offbeat workplace lark that entertains even though it sports a truth-in-advertising title that perfectly describes its own incompleteness.

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Source: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/03/06/movie-review-unfinished-business/

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