Every piece of this movie's mosaic has been done to death already in American cinema: colourful buddy pair joined at the hip - the goofball and the 'straight man', out-of-control stripper raising an adorable daughter, New York-accented growling voice coming out of a weathered boss, profanity laced repartee between shady individuals, zany Italian, Irish and black American mobsters in their NYC natural habitat, and so on, and so forth.
I really have nothing against any of the above being used as a movie device, however, if it's going to be recycled to good effect after million previous directors exploited it already, one needs to have a lot more inspiration, desire, ambition and balls than the people who made "Made".
I fully understand they didn't shoot particularly high, merely aiming for something light, breezy and hopefully funny, but the end product is very abysmal even by those standards. I barely cracked a smile twice: once wholeheartedly when Screech from TV's 'Saved by the Bell' nonchalantly strolled into a club alongside a hot babe, armed with a 'sucks to be you' look directed at others waiting in line and once more to a lesser extent during a scene with club chicks (Drea de Matteo from 'The Sopranos' and Jennifer Esposito). The rest of "Made" is not funny by a long shot, managing to get very tedious by the latter stages.
Even the performances lacked spark. Contrary to the popular consensus I did not find Vince Vaughn captivating. His over the top portrayal would've been OK if this was 'SNL' or 'Mad TV' rather than a 90-minute feature. A little of him goes a long, looong way here. Puff Daddy/P. Diddy tries his hardest to make a convincing crime boss but he's no actor. Thankfully, with him, the filmmakers didn't repeat the same mistake like they did with Vaughn, so we don't have to endure Mr. Sean Combs for long stretches.
You know things have taken a turn for the worse in the world of indie film-making when terms like 'bold', 'gutsy' and 'brave' are being used in connection with something from "Made".
I really have nothing against any of the above being used as a movie device, however, if it's going to be recycled to good effect after million previous directors exploited it already, one needs to have a lot more inspiration, desire, ambition and balls than the people who made "Made".
I fully understand they didn't shoot particularly high, merely aiming for something light, breezy and hopefully funny, but the end product is very abysmal even by those standards. I barely cracked a smile twice: once wholeheartedly when Screech from TV's 'Saved by the Bell' nonchalantly strolled into a club alongside a hot babe, armed with a 'sucks to be you' look directed at others waiting in line and once more to a lesser extent during a scene with club chicks (Drea de Matteo from 'The Sopranos' and Jennifer Esposito). The rest of "Made" is not funny by a long shot, managing to get very tedious by the latter stages.
Even the performances lacked spark. Contrary to the popular consensus I did not find Vince Vaughn captivating. His over the top portrayal would've been OK if this was 'SNL' or 'Mad TV' rather than a 90-minute feature. A little of him goes a long, looong way here. Puff Daddy/P. Diddy tries his hardest to make a convincing crime boss but he's no actor. Thankfully, with him, the filmmakers didn't repeat the same mistake like they did with Vaughn, so we don't have to endure Mr. Sean Combs for long stretches.
You know things have taken a turn for the worse in the world of indie film-making when terms like 'bold', 'gutsy' and 'brave' are being used in connection with something from "Made".