Movie review: Cedar Rapids

The satirical newspaper "The Onion" ran an article a few years ago with the brilliant headline, "Rural Nebraskan Not Sure He Could Handle Frantic Pace Of Omaha." 

The new comedy "Cedar Rapids" stretches the same general idea to feature film length, starring Ed Helms as a man from rural Wisconsin who has his eyes opened to the world by a trip to the energetic, gleaming metropolis that is Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

The movie, which debuted at Sundance last month, has a bit of the indie preciousness associated with that festival, but it's still a winning, entertaining and very funny film.

Helms is Tim Lippe, an insurance salesman who appears to have never set foot outside of his small Wisconsin hometown. He doesn't smoke, doesn't drink and isn't a jerk, which puts him at odds with virtually everyone else he meets at an insurance convention in the city of the title.

The movie's first third is mostly jokes about Lippe's squareness- he's never been on an airplane! He doesn't know how to drink! He reacts to the small, nondescript hotel like it's the rotunda of the MGM Grand! 

But eventually, the plot moves forward and the humor picks up due to his interaction with three characters: a loud, vulgar, womanizing alcoholic (John C. Reilly), a black insurance agent sheltered in other ways (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) and a married woman (Anne Heche) who treats the annual convention as her own personal vacation from life.

The others there introduce Helms to fun and debauchery that's pretty tame by the usual movie standards but are shocking for him; the movie is using standard fish-out-of-water cliches but has a great deal of fun with them. And that's largely thanks to Reilly's character, who could have gone wrong in many ways, but the actor plays it just right, as a man who hides tragedy behind a good-time facade.

Heche gives probably the best performance I've ever seen from her, as a woman who's a more grounded, Midwestern version of Vera Farmiga's character in "Up in the Air." And Whitlock's character mentions and quotes "The Wire" repeatedly, despite (or perhaps because of) Whitlock's most famous role being as that show's Senator Clay Davis. It's kind of a silly joke, but it does lead to the movie's biggest laugh.

Kurtwood Smith, the dad from "That '70s Show," delivers a creepy turn as the officious and pious head of the convention, while Alia Shawkat (Maeby from "Arrested Development") has a fun role as a hooker. And strong comedic actors like Stephen Root, Mike O'Malley and Rob Corddry show up in bit parts.

"Cedar Rapids" was directed by Miguel Arteta, whose career has consisted of a series of quirky, highly regarded indie movies that I thought, for the most part, were pretentious garbage. 

There was the deeply creepy "Chuck and Buck," and later "The Good Girl," also co-starring Reilly, which contained Jennifer Aniston's lone critically acclaimed performance. Last year's "Youth in Revolt" was a huge missed opportunity, an attempt to deconstruct Michael Cera's wussy on-screen persona but was ultimately too weird to work.

He does a better job here though, directing a script by Phil Johnston. My only real complaints are just a dash of the on-the-nose indie preciousness that Arteta brought to his previous work. For instance: when a character dies of autoerotic asphyxiation in the first five minutes, it feels unearned. As opposed to Bobcat Goldthwait's "World's Greatest Dad," in which the entire plot pivoted on that. 

Then again, I did like how super-subtle the movie was about one of the characters being gay and in the closet.
 
Finally, as a native of the Upper Midwest myself I appreciated that the film, unlike some others like it, doesn't treat Midwesterners as bumbling, unsophisticated morons. 

Seeing the names of the creators of "Sideways" and "About Schmidt"- notorious offenders at that sort of thing- in the credits as producers worried me. Sure, Helms' character is a rube- but the movie doesn't have contempt for him. 

And unlike so many comedies released lately, it doesn't have contempt for its audience, either.

---

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

---

Roll Credits: "Cedar Rapids"

Directed by: Miguel Arteta

Starring: Ed Helms, Anne Heche, John C. Reilly, Isiah Whitlock, Jr., Kurtwood Smith, Alia Shawkat, Stephen Root, Mike O'Malley, Sigourney Weaver.

Rated: R

Length: 1 hr 26 min