The latest movie to benefit from North Carolina’s taxpayer funded film incentive scheme, We’re the Millers, was released this week. I’ll admit I haven’t seen it, but it looks like some quality cinema. Rotten Tomatoes summed it up with this:
Blandly offensive (or perhaps merely offensively bland), We’re the Millers squanders its potential — and its cast — with an uneven, lazily assembled comedy.
Nice. There’s some praise.
Jon Sanders researched N.C.’s Film Tax Incentives for a piece published by the John Locke Foundation last year, and he’s written about them in his weekly newsletter, as well. We’ve blogged about them repeatedly.
Like all corporate welfare programs, this is a case of the government spending taxpayer money in an attempt to pick winners. They don’t have a good track record – not when it comes to choosing films or to choosing other businesses. And does anyone really believe a movie like this is going to have people rushing to North Carolina and therefore boost tourism?
I want my money back.
