DON READY (Jeremy Piven) is a closer. He's a salesman of mythic proportions, and his ability to sell any car to anyone at any time has him shooting all over the country with a team of salesmen, doing mercenary work to move used cars off the lot. In short, Don Ready's got the goods.

Too bad The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard doesn't quite make the sale, but really, the movie doesn't act like it's trying very hard. It's more or less a series of gags strung along against the backdrop of a Temecula, California, used car lot, where Ready and his crew—Jibby (Ving Rhames), Brent (David Koechner), and Babs (a brassy Kathryn Hahn, definitely unafraid to play ball with the boys)—arrive to help poor Mr. Selleck (James Brolin) sell some cars.

It's the first feature film directed by Neal Brennan, a veteran of Chappelle's Show, and this movie possesses some of that infamous sketch show's fearless irreverence. The movie wastes little time with exposition, and the best jokes are character based, such as Babs getting hot under the collar for a 10-year-old boy with a pituitary disorder (Rob Riggle), or a hired deejay named DJ Request (the reliably excellent Craig Robinson) refusing to play the songs people want to hear, or Mr. Selleck's daughter's spiky-haired douchebag fiancée (Ed Helms, whose paycheck was presumably cut before The Hangover's opening weekend) reminiscing the night his band opened for O-Town.

But the little that Brennan makes work here, including a funny Will Ferrell cameo, only emphasizes that The Goods feels like a sketch padded out to feature length. Piven's no help either; he leaves it to his supporting cast to sell all the laughs. The Goods makes it off the lot, but not without a lot of stalling.