1726. Moving McAllister (2007)

Starring: Benjamin Gourley, Mila Kunis, Jon Heder

Director: Andrew Black

Running Time: 89 mins

Moving McAllister is an American film about an ambitious law firm intern who volunteers to transport his boss’ niece across the country from Miami to LA, unaware that he’s in for a road trip from hell.

This film was awful. With an extremely predictable story, a collection of poor performances, and an exceptionally irritating sense of humour, I was gritting my teeth from start to finish watching Moving McAllister. It may have two brief periods of brightness, but on the whole, it’s a film to run far away from.

Let’s start off with the comedy, the main reason why I hated this film so much. Simply put, it’s just not funny, but what’s even worse is that it’s persistently infuriating from start to finish. Deluded with the idea that chucking as many idiotic and irritating characters and situations at a person is funny, the film is constant uphill struggle towards comedy, and I never laughed once.

Its first half is the worst of all, failing to provide any degree of intrigue or entertainment. You’ve got two characters, an irritating budding intern and an irritating and seemingly bratty teenage girl, who become embroiled in all manner of situations full of vomit, breakdowns, fights, arguments, hippies and more, each with the exact same outcome as the last.

The problem with that is there’s no development whatsoever in either of the characters, both of whom persist in their annoying ways until everything suddenly changes at one random point about halfway through. That is a spark for ten minutes of relative peace and quiet, and pretty much the only point of the movie I wasn’t wishing to kill the characters on screen.

Despite that, the film then reverts into a tedious and predictable final act that, whilst not as infuriating and moronic, makes absolutely no sense within the bounds of the story, and again doesn’t offer much gradual development to any of the characters, all leading up to a very undeserved and uninteresting ending to the story.

So, it’s pretty clear that this film isn’t funny, nor is it at all engaging. The other problem with Moving McAllister is the performances. Benjamin Gourley stars in the lead role as a nerdy law intern who’s insanely highly strung and afraid of girls and hippies. Apart from the fact that Gourley isn’t the most convincing geek to ever hit the screen, he completely overdoes the nerdish persona, always shivering and shaking no matter how ridiculous it may seem, and never bringing any heart to the role that may help us to like or just sympathise with him.

Alongside Gourley is Mila Kunis, who’s pretty annoying throughout as well. The only saving grace is that her character is initially meant to be an irritating presence, and her overly jolly adolescent persona does the job there. However, she doesn’t quite manage to make the transition to someone a little more likable in the latter stages when we’re meant to side with her, and that makes it even more difficult to have any reason to care about anybody involved in the film.

Overall, I hated Moving McAllister. Apart from feeling like a complete waste of 89 minutes, it’s a painfully annoying and consistently dull affair complete with awful comedy and poor performances, and that’s why I’m giving it a 3.8.