Movie Review: "Cedar Rapids"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 08 February 2011 14:54

Written by Lloyd Carroll

Cedar Rapids
Directed by Miguel Arteta
Starring Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, Anne Heche, Stephen Root, Kurtwood Smith

Ed Helms has quickly become a key member of very successful comedy ensembles as evidenced by his work on Comedy Central’s signature program, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” NBC’s “The Office,” and last year’s wildly successful movie comedy, “The Hangover,” which will have a sequel in theaters this spring.

Helms gets his first chance to star in a film with the just released Cedar Rapids that made its debut at the just concluded Sundance Film Festival. Helms made an excellent choice with this very smart comedy that delivers both poignant laughs and very believable characters.

Ed plays Tim Lippe, a rather innocent 34 year-old man who grow up in the fictitious town of Brown Valley, Wisconsin and has never really left. We’re not even sure if Tim has ever visited Milwaukee although he is spotted wearing a t-shirt with a Bucks logo on it in support of the local NBA team.

Tim is an insurance agent with Brownstar Insurance and he truly believes in the product that he sells. Raised with solid Midwestern values, it would pain him if he ever misled a customer in order to sell a policy.

It is that kind of genuineness that his boss, Bill Krogstad (Stephen Root), is hoping will land Brownstar the coveted Two-Diamond Award that is given by insurance majordomo Oren Helgesson, a judgmental moralist who, as is seemingly always the case, has a dark side (the always welcome Kurtwood Smith), at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mutual Insurers (AMSI) in Cedar Rapids. Krogstad tells Tim that the Two Diamond is a way of reassuring customers that they are with a quality agency but he has another agenda for coveting the trophy.

Conventions are kind of like class reunions except that instead of seeing your buddies from high school and college you are hanging out with business peers. There are the obligatory scavenger hunts, talent contests and seemingly endless happy hours. For a guy who has been living basically in a small town cocoon, a convention, even in a tiny burg as Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is culture shock for Tim.

Tim’s roommate is Dean “Deanzie” Ziegler (John C. Reilly). When we first meet him, he comes off as the typical “in-your-face-life-of-the-party” loudmouth that we’ve all run into at some point. As the film unfolds we learn that Dean is like Pagliacci, a clown who is making a broken heart, and is actually a very decent guy who is protective of Tim.

Tim’s experience with the opposite sex is quite limited so he doesn’t know what to when an attractive insurance agent, Joan Fox-Ostrowski (Anne Heche), flirts with him. Heche’s character is a shade less worldly version of Vera Farmiga’s Alex Goran character from 2009's Up In The Air.

The dialog and characters very much ring true. The only misfire is a scene towards the end where a drunk Tim winds up at a very ugly party on the outskirts of town being run by unsavory bikers and drug dealers and things quickly get brutal. Director Miguel Arteta told me at a press conference for the film that he was trying to emulate Jonathan Demme’s 1986 classic flick, Something Wild -- a fun comedy that  turned violent unexpectedly.

While I understand a director’s desire to surprise an audience, Arteta came dangerously close to losing control of his own film. On the whole though, Cedar Rapids delivers rapid and heartfelt laughs.

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