CREDIT: RELATIVITY MEDIA
Masterminds involves a killer cast delivering not so killer jokes.

Masterminds is an engaging, entertaining comedy based on the real events of the bank robbery of $17 million that took place in 1997.

David Ghantt works at a bank driving armoured trucks. He is engaged to Jandice, who decides to marry him after they meet at the funeral of her husband who Ghantt is related to. The relationship is blatantly and inherently flawed but Ghantt accepts it. One day he is joined by new hiree Kelly Campbell who he immediately falls in love with. Kelly eventually quits and is subsequently convinced by her deviant friend Steve Chambers to take advantage of Ghantt’s feelings in order to convince him to rob the bank for them.

This is one of those movies where someone famous fills every role and it makes the whole thing a little harder to really believe and get lost in. Fortunately the cast does an excellent job with what they had to work with.

Zach Galifianakis is a great comedy actor with a unique style of timing and delivery. He plays the simple minded Ghantt character in a way that makes him believable and likable.

I particularly liked Kate McKinnon as Jandice. Her emotionally out-of-touch small town character could have easily been overdone and made too zany to believe. McKinnon instead opted for realism, which is a successful approach. She taps into this universal crazy energy that we have all encountered in real life, which really makes the character funny. Her first scene when she and Ghantt take absurd engagement photos together is my favourite. The aesthetic of these shots feels offbeat, quirky and they are genuinely hilarious. Unfortunately the scene is killed with the dumbest fart joke of the movie.

This is the main downfall of the film. A lot of the humour in the movie is so basic that it makes you cringe: Galifianakis powdering his balls, accidentally shooting himself in the ass, etc., and a lot of it is dependent on Ghantt’s stupidity, which feels cheap. It’s like the studio decided to litter bad jokes throughout the movie to make sure it appealed to the lowest common denominator of public taste. It’s frustrating and off-putting, but fortunately there is a constant enough stream of more genuine feeling jokes that keeps things entertaining and tolerable.

There is a fair amount of slapstick humour that works well and plenty of awkward humour involving Ghantt butchering social interactions, which really plays the strengths of Galifianakis who is known for this style of humour as the host of Between Two Ferns.

The best jokes in this movie are the ones with longer setups that play with your expectations. The movie plays with suspense a lot; setting up situations that cause you to believe the movie is going in a certain direction and then diffusing them in a comical manner.

The soundtrack is quite unremarkable. It’s not the kind of film that requires an extravagant soundtrack, but it still feels kind of cheap, with barely any music safe for a few vaguely recognizable rock tracks and generic string music.

Masterminds almost has a cohesive style. The movie is vibrant, colourful and has a subtle signature way of framing shots.

A lot of the humour in this film is smart, edgy and bold, but the effect is totally diluted by the equal share of stupid jokes. It feels like someone had a vision for this movie that was compromised beyond recognition.