This movie is like the malnourished and mentally challenged 2nd cousin of Office Space. Writer/director Blayne Weaver apparently saw that cult classic and thought to himself "I can do that". Everyone who watches this film sadly knows better. This thing is written with all the grace of a three-legged hippo. It's directed with all the style of a 1947 army training film on venereal disease. There's only one decent actor here, with the rest of the cast is barely suitable to sit in the audience of an infomercial and clap on command.
I'll admit that I've actually seen movies that were less funny than Outside Sales, but this might be the lamest attempt at a comedy I've ever encountered. Those other films might have failed at being humorous, but at least they tried. Outside Sales doesn't even do that. This 90 minute long movie has a grand total of three jokes. Not three funny jokes and a bunch of others that aren't funny. Just three jokes. And if you think watching a comedy that averages one joke every 30 minutes is bad, two of the jokes take place within 30 seconds. That leaves a single joke for the other 89 and a half minutes.
In the place of fully formed comedy, this movie offers up mildly amusing premises that are then either left to wither and die or are butchered with all the finesse of a drunk in a whore house. For example, one of the characters has a brutally bad fake mustache. It looks like someone shaved a gibbon's ass and glued it to his upper lip. But no one ever makes a quip about the mustache and there's never any visual gag involving it. The movie just goes "Look! That guy has a bad fake mustache! Laugh, you idiots!" This is the sort of film that thinks old people yelling is comedy gold, that splashing coffee in a guy's crotch is funnier the second time you do it and that men awkwardly hugging is hilarious. In short, listening to an audio book version of Mein Kampf would provoke more laughter than Outside Sales.
The story concerns Paul (Lucas Fleischer), a salesman who used to be great but whose life and career has fallen apart since he caught his wife sleeping with another salesman. After six months of pathetic failure and misery, a new saleswoman is brought in to replace Paul and he's finally inspired to try and keep his job. Paul and the new saleswoman, Dagney (Tricia O'Kelley), fall in love in a condensed process that resembles the first 4 seasons of the TV show Cheers, if that show had been written by dateless morons who snorted too much cocaine. By the end of the movie, Paul must choose between saving his job and his love for Dagney. And by the end of the movie, I wouldn't have cared if Paul had been ritually murdered and turned into jerky.
Lucas Fleischer proves himself to be a better tumbler than actor in this production and is only notable for resembling a 5th generation clone of Michael Rapaport where the DNA has started to degrade. The other performers are nondescript at best, except for Tricia O'Kelley. She's cute, engaging and seems to have a genuine sense of humor, though she has absolutely nothing to do with it in this film. I'd like to see what she could do in a movie that didn't suck, which is the 2nd highest praise you can give an actor stuck in a barren wasteland like Outside Sales.
In case you haven't gotten the hint THIS FILM IS BAD. Don't watch it.
I'll admit that I've actually seen movies that were less funny than Outside Sales, but this might be the lamest attempt at a comedy I've ever encountered. Those other films might have failed at being humorous, but at least they tried. Outside Sales doesn't even do that. This 90 minute long movie has a grand total of three jokes. Not three funny jokes and a bunch of others that aren't funny. Just three jokes. And if you think watching a comedy that averages one joke every 30 minutes is bad, two of the jokes take place within 30 seconds. That leaves a single joke for the other 89 and a half minutes.
In the place of fully formed comedy, this movie offers up mildly amusing premises that are then either left to wither and die or are butchered with all the finesse of a drunk in a whore house. For example, one of the characters has a brutally bad fake mustache. It looks like someone shaved a gibbon's ass and glued it to his upper lip. But no one ever makes a quip about the mustache and there's never any visual gag involving it. The movie just goes "Look! That guy has a bad fake mustache! Laugh, you idiots!" This is the sort of film that thinks old people yelling is comedy gold, that splashing coffee in a guy's crotch is funnier the second time you do it and that men awkwardly hugging is hilarious. In short, listening to an audio book version of Mein Kampf would provoke more laughter than Outside Sales.
The story concerns Paul (Lucas Fleischer), a salesman who used to be great but whose life and career has fallen apart since he caught his wife sleeping with another salesman. After six months of pathetic failure and misery, a new saleswoman is brought in to replace Paul and he's finally inspired to try and keep his job. Paul and the new saleswoman, Dagney (Tricia O'Kelley), fall in love in a condensed process that resembles the first 4 seasons of the TV show Cheers, if that show had been written by dateless morons who snorted too much cocaine. By the end of the movie, Paul must choose between saving his job and his love for Dagney. And by the end of the movie, I wouldn't have cared if Paul had been ritually murdered and turned into jerky.
Lucas Fleischer proves himself to be a better tumbler than actor in this production and is only notable for resembling a 5th generation clone of Michael Rapaport where the DNA has started to degrade. The other performers are nondescript at best, except for Tricia O'Kelley. She's cute, engaging and seems to have a genuine sense of humor, though she has absolutely nothing to do with it in this film. I'd like to see what she could do in a movie that didn't suck, which is the 2nd highest praise you can give an actor stuck in a barren wasteland like Outside Sales.
In case you haven't gotten the hint THIS FILM IS BAD. Don't watch it.
