Catholic News Service
Some things are best left undone or not even begun in the first place. A case in point: the aptly titled “Unfinished Business.”
This vile comedy ill-advisedly aspires to be “The Hangover” for the corporate world, a tale of businessmen gone wild while away from the office. The ramshackle result is a loosely connected, tasteless and thoroughly unamusing series of crude jokes and deviant behavior.
Corporate salesman Dan Trunkman (Vince Vaughn) is fed up with his belittling boss, a woman named Chuck Portnoy (Sienna Miller). So he quits his job and sets up a rival company, intent on stealing away Chuck’s biggest client.
Prospects are slim, as Dan has only two recruits for his new firm: Tim McWinters (Tom Wilkinson), who’s washed up and near retirement, and dimwitted industry newcomer Mike Pancake (Dave Franco).
The race is on, as Dan and Chuck pursue the same big deal across the country and overseas. The target of their competition is Jim Spinch (James Marsden), the smarmy head of a global conglomerate.
Stops in Berlin and Hamburg serve mainly to satisfy the sexual fantasies of the main trio, together with their taste for recreational drugs. A supposedly comic interlude in the restroom of a gay bar includes graphic images of a perverse sexual practice that should have no place in a movie to which young people could possibly gain access.
When not partaking of his own preferred methods of dissipation, Dan spends his time on the phone home, giving very bad advice to his troubled children, Paul (Britton Sear) and Bess (Ella Anderson). The quality of Dan’s counsel can be judged by an earlier scene in which he assures Paul that masturbation is perfectly acceptable, and that he engages in it regularly himself.
The film contains strong sexual content, including aberrant situations, graphic nonmarital sexual activity as well as numerous images of full nudity, benignly viewed drug use, a few instances of profanity and pervasive rough and crude language. The Catholic News Service classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted.
