by John P. Meyer

This movie has a foul mouth and a big heart, and it's brimming with gleeful ill-will. (Gotta love it.)

Remember Bob Zemeckis' lightweight 1980 R-rated comedy Used Cars? It was a gleefully-irreverent, madcap-hilarious romp starring Kurt Russell in his (barely) pre-John Carpenter years as a high-pressure, low-ethics sales guy who finds himself falling under the romantic spell of the daughter of a car lot owner (played by Deborah Harmon). Rudy (Russell's character) will do anything to help Barbara Jane (Harmon's character) save the lot, which is under competitive attack by another local dealer who wants to gain control of it.

Used Cars featured two key elements which made it irresistible to youthful, primarily male audiences: 1) profanity, and 2) nudity (of the female variety, natch). It was also damn funny, profoundly politically incorrect, and boasted an ensemble cast that included some fine character actors (such as Jack Warden, Al Lewis, Frank McRae, and Dub Taylor).

Fast-forward your cinematic history time machine to August 2009 and take a gander at The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard. It clearly owes a lot to the Used Cars formula. (Like, almost everything mentioned above.) Which is not to say that it's either entirely derivative or not a good movie: On the contrary, I enjoyed the Hell out of it, and laughed my homage-minded butt off in the process. It's 90 minutes of deeply un-artistic, patently offensive, pruriently appealing, R-rated comedic entertainment. If drive-in movies were still around, I'd suggest queuing this up on a double-bill with Used Cars so film fans could get a double-shot of their shared ethos.

The sales force at Selleck Motors (in Temecula, CA) could benefit from some basic salesmanship training. Like, "don't punch out potential customers on the lot," for instance. In fact, they're so bad at what they do (or, more accurately, DON'T do -- ref. selling cars) that lot owner Ben Selleck (James Brolin) is in danger of losing the place to a car sales competitor. But, masochistically enough, he really likes the used car business, so he decides to call in a mercenary sales force headed up by Don Ready (Jeremy Piven), a legend in the industry.

Ready and his (hard)core team of sales agents are card-carrying members of the Hacienda Courts Frequent Sleeper program. They travel from city to city, from one save-the-lot emergency job after another, orchestrating big promotional buzz and employing cutthroat tactics to sell the ever-loving shit out of jammed up rolling metal inventories. And they do it all without any kind of Cash for Clunkers rebate program.

Ready's team consists of: Brent Gage (David Koechner), the Reliable Right-Hand Man of Long Acquaintance; Jibby Newsome (Ving Rhames), the Soulful Philosopher with a Hard Shell and a Soft Interior; and Babs Merrick (Kathryn Hahn), the Tough-As-Nails Sexpot with a Dirty Mind (and a Mouth to Match). Put 'em together and this crew can sell cars like each one came with a trunkful of the recreational, mind-altering substance of your choice. (And I wouldn't put such a stunt past 'em.)

Filling the obligatory love-interest shoes is perky Jordana Spiro (My Boys), who plays Selleck's comely daughter Ivy. The ever-ready Ready finds her to be the most beddable of those associated with the car lot (given that she's uniquely blond, young and female), and thus worthy of tossing off a few choice pickup lines. But Ivy's engaged to marry Paxton Harding (Ed Helms), son of car sales competitor Stu Harding (Alan Thicke). In the right-brained, illogical manner of such fantasy stories, Ivy finds herself viscerally attracted to this energetic, slightly sleazy, love-'em-and-leave-'em-minded Don Ready fellow. Maybe it's his refreshingly forthright manner; maybe it's his heavy five o'clock shadow; maybe it's because he's the male lead, and she's the female one.

The plot centers on a four-day 4th of July weekend, over the course of which Ready and his team will attempt to sell all 200-some-odd cars off the Selleck Motors lot. It's a challenge situation with a lot riding on the outcome, of course. Aiding the Ready team will be the existing Selleck salesmen, a motley crew including an aging, bigoted, confrontational military vet (grizzled Charles Napier, as Dick); a Korean chap who finds himself the target of a mass hate crime (Ken Jeong, as Teddy); and a young go-getter (Jonathan Sadowski, as Blake) whose sales prowess has Ready wondering whether he might be the product of a memorable Temecula one-nighter he starred in twenty years previously.

Spinning wax from the rafters is DeeJay Request (Craig Robinson), whose moniker demonstrates a high degree of irony. (In fact, you're better off just keeping your song requests to yourself.)

The whole proceedings are carried out with a manic, steamroller energy reminiscent of a film such as Dodgeball. Also reminiscent of that movie is the primary complicating character, Paxton (with Helms doing his darnedest to channel Ben Stiller's White Goodman persona). He's a weasel-ish, self-important, dim-witted blowhard who fronts a "man band" (as differentiated from a "boy band") called BigUps. They record and perform out of his father's car dealership. (Say no more.)

First-time feature film director Neal Brennan (who's done some prior directing for TV) works from a snappy one-liner-loaded script by Andy Stock and Rick Stempson. There's no evidence here to show that any of these guys are in the wrong profession.

Watch for a cameo from one of the film's producers, who appears as a figure from Ready's tragic past, accompanied by a giddily profane angelic chorus.