“War Dogs”, the newest film by director Todd Phillips (“The Hangover” trilogy, “Old School”), is OK. It’s even kind of good, or at least it feels like it really had the potential to be. That’s because the story that this movie is based off of is about as interesting a ‘true story’ as you’ll hear. Based off of an incredible sequence of real-life events chronicled in a 2011 Rolling Stone article by Guy Lawson, “War Dogs” tells the story of two twenty-something year-old guys from Florida who luck into securing significant weapons contracts from the United States government, which both makes them rich and puts them into some interesting, if not ludicrous, situations.

‘What?’ you ask? How, exactly, did they do that? Well you see, it turns out that pretty much anyone can log into this public federal website that lists all of the government’s weapons needs for the military and make a bid to supply them. Think of it as an EBay for mass military weapons contracts. It’s kind of like that. The rest of the story aside, that in itself is pretty crazy and feels like you could probably explore that a little more than Philips does here. Ultimately, that’s probably my biggest issue with the film: It seems like it’s going to be this important critique of Bush-administration war financing practices at times, but then it isn’t at all. And that’s fine, you think, because it’s a funny comedy slightly dipping its toes into these concerns, that’s cool. But then it isn’t that either. Ultimately it’s lost somewhere in the middle and its worse for it.

Anyway, David Packouz (Miles Teller) is your average guy in his early twenties: did a semester of college, said fuck that, got fired from a bunch of stuff, met a pretty girl, settled on being a masseuse for rich people in Miami. Only it turns out that massaging entitled old men isn’t all that cool. Also, he finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. So this is when he stumbles upon his grand scheme to get out of his shitty line of work and make some real money to support his incoming child: invest all remaining income into buying quality bedsheets in bulk in order to monopolize the bedsheet game in Florida’s thriving retirement home business. Sounds bulletproof, I know. It isn’t, though, and things don’t really work out. Insert long lost middle school pal Efraim Diveroli, who is back in town for a funeral, and that’s really where the story gets going. They hit it off again right away like no time has passed, David is enamored with Efraim’s lifestyle (Efraim has been doing the military defense contract thing for a little while now and isn’t afraid to show off his money, though only securing up to this point small and obscure contracts that the bigger corporations don’t pay attention to) while frustrated with his own, and then Efraim offers David a chance to come on board and partner up with him.

The rest of the plot is somewhat predictable. They start having some success, land a big contract but run into some hurdles, overcome the adversity triumphantly and make a name for themselves throughout the industry, meet an infamous and mysterious Bradley Cooper, land a REALLY big contract, internal strife ensues. They have to do some shady stuff along the way, and David keeps lying to his girlfriend because he knows what he is doing is kind of fucked up. And that’s another problem with this movie, the side plot with David and his girlfriend really never goes anywhere. I know it’s not the main story being told, but if you are going to spend that much time on it you have to make it mean something or have her have some sort of arc. Instead it comes across as sort of flat and repetitive.

But now let’s get to the film’s real offense: it’s not funny. “War Dogs" is a comedy, right? That’s the way it’s being marketed, and it is a Todd Philips movie starring Jonah Hill after all. So imagine my surprise when I chuckled to myself, like, maybe once the entire time. Don’t get me wrong, this movie doesn’t need to be funny to be good. Its source material and actors are good enough to play this like a straight drama, but what Philips is going for here is a conglomeration of the two and instead we get a story that’s ominous at times and oddly flat and light-hearted at others.

With all these complaints it probably seems like I didn’t enjoy the film, but I would actually say it leans closer to being good than being bad. I did think it was entertaining and had some real redeeming qualities, like a tremendous performance from Jonah Hill (his best yet? Maybe), a great musical score from Cliff Martinez (my favorite composer!), and some cool scenes (that scene in the desert they focus on so much in the trailers? It’s really good). Oh yeah and Bradley Cooper is nonchalantly fantastic for the 10 minutes he is on screen too.

So, should you go see “War Dogs”? Sure. I mean, don’t necessarily rush to the theater and fight for seats, but it’s pretty fun (though not funn-y, remember) and if you are looking for something to watch you could do a lot worse on the big screen right now. Also it’s worth checking out just to watch Jonah Hill, honestly. I love Dick Cheney’s America! (not really, see the movie and you’ll get it).