We're the Millers (2013)
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber
No · Ultra Based
How we score movies →Consciousness Markers
Mexican characters and border crossing scenarios deployed as comedic stereotypes. No racial awareness or critical engagement with these elements.
Predominantly white cast with no intentional diversity messaging or inclusive casting choices. Female characters deployed as comedic objects.
No LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or thematic content present in the film.
No feminist consciousness evident. Female characters, including a stripper, are primarily comedic vehicles without agency or depth.
No environmental messaging, climate themes, or ecological consciousness of any kind.
Drug trafficking presented as a business venture for profit with no critique of capitalism or systemic inequality.
No body positivity messaging. Bodies used primarily for physical comedy and comedic discomfort.
No representation of or engagement with neurodivergent characters or themes.
Contemporary comedy with no historical setting or revisionist historical content.
Pure entertainment vehicle with no preachy messaging, lectures, or attempts at moral instruction.
Synopsis
A veteran pot dealer creates a fake family as part of his plan to move a huge shipment of weed into the U.S. from Mexico.
Why it received this score
We're the Millers is a 2013 comedy that approaches social consciousness the way a suburban family approaches a Costco parking lot: with complete indifference. Director Rawson Marshall Thurber has assembled a film designed entirely for commercial appeal, stripped of any impulse toward progressive sensibility. The narrative follows a marijuana dealer recruiting acquaintances to pose as a suburban family for a drug smuggling operation, and the entire enterprise operates as a vehicle for crude humor and familiar sitcom dynamics. There is no interrogation of the setup, no subversive commentary lurking beneath the surface. The film simply wants you to laugh at the discomfort of people pretending to be related.
The representation markers are essentially dormant throughout. The cast is predominantly white, the female lead is a former stripper deployed primarily for comedic situations, and Mexican characters and border crossing scenarios function as scenery for punchlines rather than subjects of any meaningful consideration. The film's engagement with race is limited to surface-level stereotyping played for laughs. There is no evidence of feminist consciousness, LGBTQ+ representation, environmental awareness, or any other marker of contemporary progressive filmmaking. The criminal enterprise at the film's center is treated as a business opportunity, not as material for anti-capitalist reflection. Bodies exist in the film only to generate physical comedy.
This is not a film that failed to achieve progressive sensibility. This is a film that never attempted it. We're the Millers operates in a cultural register that predates the modern constellation of social consciousness markers entirely. It is a pure commercial product, competent at its singular task of generating summer box office revenue through familiar formulas. To score it for wokeness is to measure a hammer for its ability to bake bread. The exercise is not particularly illuminating, but the score reflects the absence rather than the presence of anything to measure.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Critic Reviews
“While Aniston shows that she's as deft on a stripper pole as she is with her sitcom-honed timing, Sudeikis wields his smart-ass sarcasm like a barbed weapon. And more often than not, it kills.”
“We’re the Millers is just good enough to keep you entertained, but not good enough to keep your mind from wandering from time to time. This is an aggressively funny comedy that takes a lot of chances, and connects just often enough.”
“Needless to say, the shapely Aniston pulls it off without a hitch — even if she never actually appears without a stitch. If this gutsy performance leads to better opportunities—a remake of Demi Moore's ill-conceived "Striptease," perhaps — I might sleep better at night. ”
“Even a premise this stupidly contrived stands a fair chance of working if there are a few decent yuks to be had, but absent any such inspiration, We’re the Millers falls back on the sort of lazy but desperate, sexually fixated non sequiturs that have become de rigueur in studio comedies, jabbing repeatedly at the human groin in hopes of eventually hitting something funny.”