CEDAR RAPIDS REVIEW

Hands up who recalls the trailer for The American (you know the one with George Clooney)? You do? Great. You may recall how you thundered off to the cinema in the hopes of seeing Clooney blow shit up. What you do recall though is the trailer was pretty misleading. It promised one thing and delivered another (which incidentally was very good). And here’s the thing with Cedar Rapids. The trailer promised all kinds of things. Namely slapstick with the likes of Ed Helms and John C. Reilly fuckin shit up! And it does, but not at the pace you might think. Instead, we get a very funny, sweet and a methodical movie that is far removed from its trailer. And that’s not a bad thing. There’s probably only so much “gross out” we can take anyway…right?

Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is the quiet, small town insurance guy who is sent to Cedar Rapids to represent his company at an annual insurance convention (bet you can’t guess where it is?) and is instructed to bring back some much coveted Oscar for the insurance industry (or something). Once he lands in Cedar Rapids, his small town innocence is brought to the forefront as he makes his way to the conference in a rental car that blows his mind. Once he gets to the hotel the small town innocence continues with hookers and chlorine and then he meets Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly) who is the hard core insurance party boy. Along with Isiah (sheee-it) Whitlock Jr they embark on a serious of partying and corruption discovery and not much else really as Lippe continues on a journey of self discovery.

There’s a number of great scenes here bursting with some great dialogue  (it’ written by Helms, C. Reilly and Anne Heche) in particular the swimming pool scene show’s C. Reilly at his best! And throughout the whole movie Dewey Cox shines bright. That’s not to say the rest of the cast are left in the shadows. Helms is great and exudes a wonderful innocence that is continually walking a fine line with hookers and crack pipes. Anne Heche has a great performance here too with a constant subtle sexiness that will have you thinking “I so would”. And Isiah Whitlock Jr. also brings the goods and probably has a number of scene stealing moments.

Overall Cedar Rapids will certainly bring the laughs and an amount of these are real out loud to boot. It’s cast are really good, in particular John C. Reilly. It might linger a little bit in the middle and the redneck party, while hilarious, feels it’s only there to extend the running time a bit. I can’t really find a great deal negative to say about the movie. Don’t expect tonnes of slapstick, but do expect a sweet little movie that is incredibly clever and funny. In the end it convinces you to buy a policy. Unfortunately like most insurance policy's there quickly forgotten about and put into the back of a drawer somewhere. But don’t let that put you off!