Made (2001)
Grade: C+
Cast: Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Sean Combs, Peter Falk, Famke Janssen
Director: Jon Favreau
Rated R for pervasive language, some drug use and sexuality


“Swingers”, one of 1996’s most winning films, is a comedy of surprising charm. It’s a great movie about the single Mike (Jon Favreau, great straight man) and his ladies’ man best friend Trent (the hilarious Vince Vaughn). It isn’t really fresh, but it’s consistently funny as Mike struggles to get over a girlfriend he’s been broken up with for six months (he finally gets over her with quite the rebound: Heather Graham), and we regularly sympathize for the guy (Favreau makes this easy, coming off as an anybody, though not unlike Woody Allen without the incest).

Is “Swingers” (my grade: B+) a perfect comedy? No. I loved it, but it is more funny than hilarious, if you know what I mean. Favreau and Vaughn decided to collaborate again with the more top-heavy “Made”, and from the beginning it promises to be more hilarious than “Swingers”. It never quite lives up to that promise. Too bad, because some of the funniest scenes in years appear in “Made”. I may have already forgotten the wannabe-Tarantino pretension, but I may never forget the scene on the airplane, or the first scene in the hotel room. Vaughn is more brilliantly motormouthed than in “Swingers”, and Favreau’s reactions are more priceless. Too bad “Made” as a whole is so disappointing.

If “Swingers” is more emotionally ambitious and uninterested in plot, “Made” is more ambitious in its plot and less interested in emotions. Stylistically, it tries to be the bizarre love child of “Pulp Fiction” and, well, “Swingers”, but it tries so hard that in the end the wannabe mixture didn’t work.

“Made” involves Bobby (Favreau) and Ricky (Vaughn), two loser boxers who get involved in a money-laundering scheme with the mob. Well, I’m ahead of myself. The reason they are involved is that Bobby’s girlfriend is a stripper, and he went a little overboard with his punishment for a guy who wasn’t respecting the rules. To pay for his damage (which, for the record, was merely a few bruises in the face of a respected customer), Bobby has to do some favors for Peter Falk, and Ricky really, really wants to come along.

The repartee between Vaughn and Favreau in “Made” is on the verge of brilliant. Take, for instance, the scene on the airplane when Ricky can’t get over the fact that they’re flying first class. Or the scene in the hotel where Ricky is asking the guy with the goldfish where to find the “honies”. Vaughn is funnier than ever, and you can tell that the hours of practice in front of a mirror that Favreau no doubt went through paid off, because he does the straight man thing wonderfully. Like, as good as Jason Lee does the best friend thing. The two scenes I mentioned are classics, and the rest of the film has great moments too, most of them from Vaughn.

P. Puff Diddy Daddy (in the film world, he’s known as Sean Combs) has a part in the film, which I believe is his film debut (he was supposed to play Jamie Foxx’s part in “Any Given Sunday” but for some reason was replaced; he was also in 2001’s “Monster’s Ball”). He’s not in every scene, but we get a chance to see if he can act or not. My opinion? I kind of liked him. His first scene or two seemed to be like the part in the music video where Puffy halts the music to advance the storyline of the video. However, as the film progresses, I liked Di(a)ddy a lot. Like Snoop Dogg and unlike Dr. Dre, he seemed like a rapper who could actually act.

My overall verdict of “Made” is not a very positive one. It dragged for too long, and that’s a bad thing when the credits start rolling at a mere 89 minutes. There were parts when I was laughing hysterically, but “Made” works so hard on compiling twists, suspense, and style that as a comedy, it’s rather empty. The thievery of “Reservoir Dogs” in “Swingers” made devilishly ironic sense, since it was satirizing the “everyone steals from everyone theory”. But when “Made” steals from “Reservoir Dogs”, it’s either hypocrisy, carelessness, pointless evoking of nostalgia from “Swingers”, or all of the above. The comedy in made is about as reliable as black on a Dalmatian—it only shows up in spots, but when it shows up, it’s definitely there. If “Made” had had a better structure and was less worried about being considered a hip movie, it would be a lot better. Its disappointment is even more depressing because of its signs of greatness. It even has a really funny ending scene. But I guess that doesn’t mean anything. “The Shipping News” had a lot of funny scenes too, but a great film it was not.


-Alex, September 2002