With a Cast As Good As This, How Bad Can 'Masterminds' Be?

There are a lot of really terrible movies with great casts —- Tim Burton’s 1996 Mars Attacks always springs to mind —- but few are as bad as Masterminds, featuring a cast that, upon its release in 2015, was at or near the top of their respective games. Zach Galifianakis was in his Between Two Ferns era, not long after The Hangover series that made him popular; it was one of Kristen Wiig’s post-Bridesmaids roles; it may have been a downswing in Owen Wilson’s career, but he was still making Cars movies, and Zoolander 2 arrived shortly thereafter; it was before Ted Lasso, but not long after Jason Sudeikis left SNL, back when he was making Horrible Bosses movies; and Kate McKinnon was still on SNL, a year before her Ghostbusters film.

It was also the midpoint in director Jared Hess’s career, between Napoleon Dynamite and A Minecraft Movie, and came from —- among others —- SNL and Parks and Recreation writer Emily Spivey, as well as two writers (Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer) who would eventually write A Minecraft Movie.

What could go wrong? Everything. Masterminds was proof once again that all the talent in the world cannot salvage a bad script, and not even a good screenwriter can make up for terrible performances. Masterminds is an atrociously bad comedy —- one of the worst I have ever seen —- and absolutely everyone is to blame. I’m not sure exactly what killed the theatrical comedy —- I often point to the failure of 2017’s Rough Night (ScarJo, Kate McKinnon) —- but Masterminds certainly contributed to it. (And if you think the list of highest-grossing original films since 2010 is depressing, find a list of the highest-grossing original live-action comedies since 2015. Woof. It’s basically Blockers and Game Night.)

It’s a weirdly semi-popular title on streaming, too —- the kind of film that occasionally pops into a streaming service’s top ten (it’s number four on Paramount+ right now) not because it’s good, but because curious people see the cast and assume it can’t be that bad. Trust me. It is.

Whatever made A Minecraft Movie work —- to the extent that it does —- is completely missing here. Jared Hess is not a good director, but occasionally (well, twice), the manic energy of someone like Jack Black or Jason Momoa can sell his incoherence. I suspect Hess lets his actors build their own characters, which can sometimes work, but it’s the director’s job to shape them. To tell them when it’s not working. Here, Hess amps up the most obnoxious excesses of his entire cast and lets their grating bad-improv skills run amok. There’s barely a laugh in the entire film, which looks like it was shot entirely in one take while the actors were still working out their characters.

Based on a true story, the premise itself is fascinating, which makes Masterminds all the more of a waste. It’s about the 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery —- also known as the “hillbilly heist” —- the second-largest cash robbery in the history of the United States. David Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis), an employee of Loomis Fargo, robbed his own vault, left the $17.3 million in cash with his co-conspirators, Kelly Campbell (Kristen Wiig) and Steve Chambers (Owen Wilson), and fled the country to Mexico. Chambers promised to wire him money in Mexico until the investigation blew over and Ghantt could return to North Carolina.

However, the FBI knew immediately who robbed the vault (Ghantt was seen on a security camera), and it didn’t take long for them to loop in Kelly Campbell. Steve Chambers and his wife (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) were a little more difficult to connect to the heist. But when a man who formerly lived in a mobile home started lavishly spending money on a luxury house ($635,000 in cash), expensive cars, and a ring ($42,000 in cash), it became easy to connect the dots. In the meantime, Chambers not only refused to wire money to Ghantt in Mexico but ultimately hired a hitman (Jason Sudeikis) to take him out. The FBI (Leslie Jones, Jon Daly) made quick work of the case, and everyone involved was eventually arrested and imprisoned. The true story may have lent itself to potentially interesting characters, but the narrative is better suited to an SNL skit.

The biggest problem with the movie, however, is that the cast had no idea what the hell they were trying to do. They’re meant to be trailer-park trash, but they come off like character experiments on a bad night at the Groundlings. Galifianakis seems to be playing someone out of Dumb and Dumber 3; Kristen Wiig plays what could only be described as her worst SNL character; Owen Wilson plays an Owen Wilson character on mute; and Sudeikis plays a bumbling hitman who can’t pull the trigger after he finds out his target shares his name and birthdate —- the dumbest twist since the Martha revelation in Batman vs. Superman.

I wish I could say that McKinnon —- who plays Ghantt’s fiancée —- acquitted herself better, but she plays one of those creepy McKinnon characters who just stares at the camera and makes faces, like Jim Carrey in nearly all of his post-2000 comedies (coincidentally, Jim Carrey originally signed on for Galifianakis’s role but smartly pulled out). Leslie Jones, meanwhile, has around five lines, all of which involve yelling.

There is nothing of value in this movie. Even the outtakes during the credits are bad. With a cast like this, and Emily Spivey as part of the writing team, Masterminds shouldn’t be nearly as obnoxious and dull as it is —- but nothing ever clicks. It’s a farce that never farces; a comedy without jokes. It’s 90 minutes of mugging for the camera, but the only people who feel mugged are the ones tricked into watching it by the recognizable cast.

To its credit, Masterminds does nail the broad strokes of the real story, although it leaves out a couple of noteworthy details. For instance, after stealing $17.3 million — $11 million of which was in $20 bills — the conspirators had to leave behind $3 million in cash because they couldn’t fit it all in their cars.

Also, the film misses a real-life detail that’s more amusing than anything in the movie. From Wikipedia:

An additional tip reached the FBI when Michelle Chambers made a large deposit at a bank. She had previously been making frequent small deposits to avert suspicion. But after one visit, she asked a teller “How much can I deposit before you have to report it to the feds?” followed by “Don’t worry, it is not drug money.” The bank filed a suspicious activity report, which ultimately reached the FBI.

The point is: The next time you’re surfing streaming services, it may be tempting to click if you see a thumbnail with the impressive cast and think you’re about to discover a ten-year-old hidden gem. This is not that.