Movie Review - Cedar Rapids

Cedar Rapids (2011)

Starring Ed Helms, Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Sigourney Weaver, and John C. Reilly

Directed by Miguel Arteta

Cedar Rapids kind of feels like The Office transplanted to the Mid-West and paired with a bit more raunch and a little less humor (despite its best attempts).  There's a droll, dry sensibility on display that works some of the time.  However, there are simply too many moments in the film's short 86 minutes that fall flat, relying on that indie comedy staple that humor can be derived from poking fun at the small town local yokels who live inside some cocoon and go a little cuckoo once the bubble pops enabling them to escape into the more metropolitan world.

Ed Helms is Tim Lippe, an insurance salesman from the small town of Brown Valley, Wisconsin.  Having never really set foot outside of the confines of the town, when Tim's boss asks him to attend an insurance conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he finds himself a bit on the edge.  With the encouragement of his lover and former elementary school teacher Macy (Sigourney Weaver), Tim gets the courage to head to the "big city," getting on his first plane and sleeping at his first hotel.  With the goal to win his company the coveted Two Diamond Award, Tim finds himself spending time with three conventioneers who have been to the affair before -- the serious and solemn Ronald (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.), the crazy and lewd Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), and the sexy and wry Joan (Anne Heche).  Needless to say, Tim's eyes will be opened to a brand new world unlike his small-town eyes have ever seen before.

The problems with Cedar Rapids certainly don't stem from the actors.  Everyone here is actually quite charming and surprisingly believable.  Based off of his introduction, I figured I'd have been rolling my eyes every time John C. Reilly's oafish Ziegler came on the screen, but he won me over somehow.  Isiah Whitlock (apparently of The Wire) probably struck the best note with me thanks to his dry delivery.  And Anne Heche is goshdarn charming and cute here.  Ed Helms simply seems to be playing his character from The Office and he's the weak link of the quartet, but that's more the fault of "Tim Lippe" than "Ed Helms."

All in all, with the pleasant group of actors, it's a disappointment that the humor just isn't there.  The film veers off into an odd and rather uncomfortable finale which is supposed to serve as some kind of awakening for Helms' Lippe, but it ends up veering into my Movie Pet Peeve which I've mentioned numerous times before -- Old People Doing Drugs for the Purposes of Laughter.  And while that's not the only sticking point -- see my initial paragraph about a common indie comedy staple that applies here as well -- it made the film end on more of a down note than I would have preferred.  Cedar Rapids is pleasant enough thanks to the actors, but it's a shame they weren't given a bit better material.

The RyMickey Rating:  C