My Review of "Masterminds"

When Masterminds first came out in 2016, I wasn't exactly really excited to watch it. The story was kind of interesting but I've always been kind of 50/50 with Zach Galifianakis comedies. Sometimes I get his humor and I'll find his comedy to be hilarious but other times I can find him rather annoying and totally miss out on the jokes. It's not really his fault, he's been consistent I've just always been off and on with his type of humor.

In this movie, Zach Galifianakis plays as David Ghantt. David is a security guard at security company called Loomis Fargo. He's a nice guy and very gullible. He kind of lives a really mundane life and wants to have some excitement in his life. Luckily (or unluckily) enough for him he gets a new co-worker by the name of Kelly, played by Kristen Wiig. She quickly captures the heart of David.

Kelly soon gets fired and kind of goes into a downward spiral and hangs around with new friends including Steve, played by Owen Wilson. Steve is an opportunist scumbag and wants to use Kelly's persuasion on David to help them rob Loomis Fargo.

To get the movie rolling of course David falls for Kelly and helps commit the biggest bank robbery in American history. The rest I won't ruin for you but that's just the premise of the story.

Much of the story is the aftermath of the bank robbery rather than the bank robbery itself. There's a lot of character relationship issues that come into play after the bank robbery. There's betrayal and misunderstandings everywhere and I guess that's where you find your comedy. It is definitely a dark comedy but with a Hollywood delivery. What I mean by that is that the Charlie Brown character, in this case David, isn't always a Charlie Brown character. He has his high and lows and you always get a sense that there's a silver-lining or moral to the story.

Since this is based on a true story there are a number of scenes and situations that happen in the movie that I really wonder about. If some of the crazy things in the movie actually happened in real life I would be really shocked. How did they make this crazy stuff up though? Someone has to have a really good imagination or wow maybe it actually did happen.

All of the cast in the movie did a pretty good job. They were even a little believable as real characters that may have actually existed. They didn't play it off that they'd be extreme caricatures of the people they were portraying. Well there are moments when the caricatures would show but you have to expect it because it's a comedy.

As for the comedy, a lot of the crazy situations were so outrageous I could help but chuckle. There is maybe one or two really laugh out loud moments and I think it's because of the deadpan delivery of Zach Galifianakis in such awkward and bizarre situations. There's only a handful of comedians that can deliver those deadpan faces at the right time and he's one of them. So I would say that there is comedy there but it isn't for everyone. I can also see how some people would find this comedy off-putting or mundane. The more I watch Zach's stuff, the more I get it even though it's not necessarily my favorite form of comedy.

Overall, I still had a good time watching it. I wouldn't say it's the best movie out there but I do believe that a lot of critics were a little too harsh on this movie. I don't think it's as bad as everyone makes this movie out to be. It's a movie that you can watch to kill 2 hours and have fun watching these actors ham it up and have fun. You can tell they had a fun time doing this movie too. I would have to give this movie a 7 out of 10.

I'm starting to become softer for this awkward deadpan humor that movie companies keep churning out. Maybe it's because I've seen so many that they're starting to win me over but I still don't prefer this humor. For someone that doesn't normally or has never seen this type of humor I would say give it a try. You never know, you might understand them better than I do.