
Based on a true story (apparently), Masterminds tells the tale behind one of the biggest bank heists in US history, and the aftermath of what follows. We follow the story of David Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis), a local driver transporting money around. Despite being engaged to Jandice (Kate McKinnon), he starts to fall for a co-worker, Kelly (Kristen Wiig). Kelly's friend Steve (Owen Wilson), a small time criminal, sees this as an opportunity to take advantage of David's feelings, getting Kelly to convince David to rob his workplace of $17 million. He does so, and what comes of this is a worldwide manhunt, led by a detective (Leslie Jones), who I legitimately don't know the name of, and on IMDb she is simply listed as 'detective,' so there's that.
The so-called "humour" in this film doesn't work in the slightest, and I will be honest, that's impressive. The fact that the film managed to get so much talent involved in this thing, and waste every single one of them is hard to do. With a cast consisting of Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudeikis, Owen Wilson, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, the odds of the film being painstakingly unfunny are extremely low, yet here we are with Masterminds, and they managed to achieve just that. They managed to create a painstakingly unfunny film using all of these actors. It just blows me away how this managed to happen.
While I'm not really familiar with the true story, I find it very hard to believe. The film, one would presume, is an extremely exaggerated version of this tale, or at least I would hope so, as there's simply no way people would have done the things these characters did. Every aspect of the plot is just ridiculously stupid, and not in a funny-stupid kind of way, but in a plain old stupid way. There was a point when the stupidity got to me, and despite there still being thirty minutes left, I was done. I just couldn't take it anymore. But don't let that fool you into thinking the first hour is any better. I checked my watch half an hour in, thinking the movie was coming to a close, and I wanted to cry when I found out I still had 65 more minutes to endure.