Watching people argue for the duration of a movie is usually not a fun thing to do. Well, it can be if the movie is a comedy and the writers work the script correctly. Unfortunately, this is not the case in Waking Up in Reno. Worse, the people in the movie are all idiots, and it's all meant to be this way. Apparently, somebody believed that watching hicks argue on a road trip across America would make for a funny movie. Now, this may be true in some cases, but the first rule of a comedy is that is should have jokes, something that this movie is in dire need of.
The road trip in question ends in Reno, culminating in a huge monster truck show. Lonnie Earl (Billy Bob Thornton, Monster's Ball, Bandits), his wife Darlene (Natasha Richardson, Blow Dry, The Parent Trap), their friends Roy (Patrick Swayze, Green Dragon, Donnie Darko) and his wife Candy (Charlize Theron, Trapped, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion) are all excited and ready to go. Unbeknownst to Darlene and Roy, Lonnie and Candy slept together, although Candy feels extremely guilty about the whole thing. Well, Candy and Roy are also trying to have a baby, and Roy keeps calling the doctor for some reason not revealed until later in the movie. Too bad everybody can guess what is going to happen.
The other big source of tension in Brent Briscoe (Hillbilly Heist) and Mark Fauser's (Hillbilly Heist, It's All About You) is that both couples are not that happy. Lonnie went to Candy because he wants some good lovin' from Darlene, and Candy doesn't really know if she loves dim-witted (well, relatively speaking) Roy. As they make their way across the country, Lonnie is trying to stick to his schedule like a maniac, annoying Darlene and everybody else. Waking Up in Reno is just a whole bunch of arguing, jokes that fall flat, and other random things courtesy of director Jordan Brady (The Third Wheel, Dill Scallion). He never provides any reason for the people watching the film to continue to do so, everything is dull, bland, and annoying. None of the characters are interesting, and one wishes they would just leave each other so the movie could end quicker.