Review: Cedar Rapids

I just wanted to offer a few words on this new comedy from Office funnyman Ed Helms.  Comedy is difficult for me, I suppose it's difficult for most.  To try and predict if a movie will make me laugh is virtually impossible.  My feelings toward new comedy are apprehensive at best, same with new horror films.  And so I pretty much avoid new comedies unless I'm explicitly told by a tried and true source that I must see such-and-such.  This is how I avoided seeing The Hangover for so long.  A movie that I wrote off as another man-child adventure and this time in that most cliched of movie cities, Las Vegas.  However, one day on a trip to the supermarket, I stopped at the Redbox looking for new fare only to find nothing.  My girlfriend is always in favor of a comedy.  (I, always foreign art-house, which I guess can become tiresome.)  So I figured I'd give it a go with The Hangover, as it was the only comedy I thought might not be completely terrible.  Well, that or G-Force.  The movie was pleasant surprise that had me laughing out loud from the first paging of Dr. Faggot. 

Zach Galifianakis was the anchor of the movie with Helms and Bradley Cooper playing the straight men.  In Cedar Rapids, Helms plays the straight man again, but this time as the protagonist.  He has to play it straight for us to care about him at all and he does it well.  I don't think it's ever difficult to sympathize with him, even as the often irritating Andy Bernard.  In Rapids Helms plays a Midwestern insurance salesman, Tim Lippe,  sent to an insurance convention in the eponymous city and it is immediately apparent that this is a case of a little fish in a...er slightly bigger pond.  Hell, he's probably never been out of his one-stoplight valley town.  He's a good guide and easy to root for, but ultimately not that funny.  His best lines are ones that implicitly express his ignorance of the world around him.  Isaiah Whitlock Jr.  plays a fellow insurance salesman who plays it straight throughout.  (Except for the much talked about Omar Little dialogue.)  Not surprisingly it's John C. Reilly who gives the movie real comedy credibility.  He's irreverant and loud and just profane, but still somehow likeable.  He represents the truth underneath all the Midwestern Bible thumping.  People are fucked up and he's not scared to show it.  To put it plainly, John C. Reilly is the reason to see this movie.  There is a fairly interesting story about man who comes to terms with the darkness of world around him.  Like Blue Velvet, but with less Dennis Hopper and less disembodied ears.  There were moments that dragged, when I found myself looking at the velvet curtains in the theater.  Overall pretty good, and not a waste of time, thanks to John C. Reilly.