Cedar Rapids
** ½ (out of 4 stars)
Starring: Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, Anne Heche
Directed by: Miguel Arteta
To view the Cedar Rapids trailer, click here.
Like the town itself, the movie Cedar Rapids is a little odd, but harmless. The film has ambitions to be a gut-buster in the style of The Hangover or The 40-Year Old Virgin. But in the end, the trip to Cedar Rapids is slow, predictable, and just not as funny as it tries to be.
Cedar Rapids is actually the coming-of-age story of an insurance salesman. It tells the tale of Tim Lippe (Ed Helms), a naïve, rural Midwest nice guy who is taking his first airplane trip to the big city of Cedar Rapids. After one of his co-workers dies in some sort of sexual accident, Tim (who is passionate about his work) is selected to represent his company at a conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. What is sort of sweet here is that he doesn’t go off to New York City or Los Angeles or Las Vegas. This country mouse doesn’t stray far from home, yet still he finds grass that is deceptively greener.
The premise is a good one, full of satiric possibility. But rather than letting let the quirky characters lead the way in an intelligent way, the screenwriter decided to dumb-down the film by adding unnecessarily edgy low humor involving auto-asphyxiation, prostitution, betrayal, alcoholism, Oedipal sexual situations, and the smoking of crack pipes. Rather than make you laugh out loud, the movie tends to make you squirm a little. In the moments that the film really works, it strikes universal chords of the human condition, but those situation-driven moments are fleeting.
Still, for all of its inappropriateness, I’ll give Cedar Rapids a compliment that few films deserve – it is possibly one of the least cynical movies made lately. Maybe that is one of the problems with the film – the wholesome quality at the center of this story doesn’t support the over-the-top gross humor at the film’s edges. The jokes may often be tasteless, but they are rarely mean-spirited, with one exception – the inclusion of a Bible-thumping hypocrite named Orin Helgesson who heads the insurance convention. As played by Kurtwood Smith (from TV’s That 70s Show), the character seems to be a cliché whose time has passed. The humor derived from making fun of a Christian of faith (or the addition of a plot twist that results in the Christian being seen as a total hypocrite) is a tired device that shows a lack of imagination on the part of the filmmakers.
The cast is first-rate and they work well as an ensemble: John C. Reilly plays an alcoholic prankster to the hilt; Anne Heche is likable as an adulteress determined to enjoy her time away from home; Sigourney Weaver as Lippe’s seventh grade teacher-turned-commitment-shy girlfriend gives a nicely understated performance. But it is Isiah Whitlock Jr., as a straight-laced fan of “HBO’s program The Wire,” who steals the show. Ironically, due to what is probably poor editing and story continuity, it is tricky to anticipate just what his character will do or say next. His performance is just confusing enough to remain surprising throughout the film.
Unfortunately the rest of Cedar Rapids is all too predictable. As soon as the characters are introduced, we figure out the entire story arc, and the slow pace of the film doesn’t help. In spite of some fine performances I just can’t recommend a trip to the movies to see Cedar Rapids. Instead, add it to your Netflix queue… somewhere near the bottom.
