Cedar Rapids

Ed Helms, fresh off his portrayal as an uptight dentist who cuts loose in Vegas in The Hangover, plays an uptight insurance agent who cuts loose in Cedar Rapids in the indie comedy Cedar Rapids.

Heh. I just realized that connection as I was typing this.

This is an odd little comedy featuring Helms as a stunted insurance agent named Tim Lippe who looks up to the "high powered" agent in his little town of Brown River, Wisconsin, and who pines to marry his once-a-week lover—his former sixth grade teacher who treats him like a child when she's not using him for no-strings-attached sex.

The catalyst for the story is that the high-powered agent is found dead (in his bathroom, a victim of auto-erotic asphyxiation) and Tim has to represent his company at the Two Diamonds award ceremony in the big city—Cedar Rapids. Before he leaves, his boss (Stephen Root) warns him away from insurance pariah Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly) who's already set about poaching clients from the asphyxiated agent.

When he gets to Cedar Rapids, he meets his roommate—also his first black person, apparently—mild mannered Ronald Wilkes (Isaiah Whitlock Jr., of "The Wire", which is a running gag), and gets to experience his upgraded suite at the low cost of having to share the room with another roommate.

Well, you see where this is going: It's none other than Dean Ziegler, a crude, foul sumbitch, who seems intent on offending the conservative Christian promoter (Kurtwood Smith) and groping anything remotely female. Anne Heche rounds out the crew as the oddly sexy agent from whom Cedar Rapids represents her one chance a year to cut loose.

The movie proceeds in this fashion from a sort of Woody Allen-esque awkwardness to a wild not-quite-Hangover-esque bacchanalia to something sort of like a caper film. It's a genial (if not rollicking) trip, made pleasant by the general good-nature of the main characters and the clear delineation of the film's few villains.

Particularly touching is Tim Lippe's recounting of how he came to want to be an agent. Where the others seem to have fallen in to it, or done it after failing at other things, Lippe sees agents as heroic—a view of agents we do not get much these days, but one which is far more valid than that of the agent as rapacious pirate of others' misfortunes.

Also satisfying is Lippe's growth from idealistic, naive child to real man with real ambitions—becoming more aware without becoming cynical or losing his ideals.

I liked it and The Boy was also not displeased.

Trainwreck

Judd Apatow movies have the distinct and perhaps dubious honor of being among the raunchiest mainstream movies while also being the most subversive. Where 40 Year Old Virgin challenged male promiscuity, and Knocked Up suggested that maybe getting and staying together for the sake of a child is not such a bad thing, we now have Trainwreck, which challenges that holiest of grails: Female promiscuity.

Some time ago, rather than rein in the men who are dogs, a loud, connected and unimpeachable group of women decided they should "get to be" dogs, too, hence this story of a woman who finds her life of drunken hookups unsatisfying is controversial.

I mean, not to sane people, of course, but to...well, they're out there in the media. You can find them without even looking too hard.

Amy Schumer stars, and she wrote it, sort of by cribbing the opening of Shallow Hal, reversing typical rom-com tropes, and mixing in a bunch of her trademark humor which, yes, is reminiscent of Sarah Silverman and Janeane Garofalo. (In fact, I was frequently reminded of a Garofalo bit where she's kicking the guy out of her apartment post-coitus.)

There's a lot of what typically makes Apatow films enjoyable: Frequent humor delivered with a sure hand, not frantically or desperately, and a supporting cast which doubles both as humor relief pitchers and dramatic backstops. So, while the cute love story between Amy and Aaron (Bill Hader) would be an okay chick flick (like Bridesmaids chick flick, not Beaches chick flick), this movie transcends that with:

• Aaron's best friend being a very sensitive (and passionate about Cleveland!) LeBron James.
• Amy's former boyfriend being the phenomenally thick and musclebound Steven (wrestler John Cena), unable to talk dirty, and possibly a little "confused" sexually.
• Amy's dog of a father, played by Colin Quinn, having MS and being both wildly offensive and lovably human.
• Amy's sister Kim, played by Brie Larson (Short Term 12, The Spectacular Now), who's generally the nice one, but who has unresolved resentment toward dad.
• Vanessa Bayer as the work friend. I've never seen her before, but she was quite appealing.
• Dave Attell as the homeless guy who begs outside of Amy's apartment. Attell may have adlibbed all his stuff, it sounds so...Attell-y.
• Randall Park (Kim Jong Un in The Interview) and "Delocated"'s Jon Glaser play Amy's dorky co-workers at S'NUFF magazine.
• Mike Birbiglia (Cedar Rapids) and Evan Brinkman have the sort of thankless task of being Kim's husband and stepson (respectively), who must be dorky and unlovable when Amy has one point of view, and then endearing when she reforms.
• There's an awesome running gag about an arty film called "Dogwatcher" featuring a morose, chain-smoking Daniel Radcliffe as the guy walking seven dogs, and a troubled Marissa Tomei as the woman who wants to give him one more dog.
• Tilda Swinton as the evil boss and Ezra Miller as the odd intern. Swinton and Miller were the contentious mother and son of the grisly We Need To Talk About Kevin.

Actually, we've seen so much of Miller, we were going nuts trying to remember where. The Boy and I both thought maybe he was part of The Wolf Pack but he had an important role as "8612" in The Stanford Prison Experiment, The Perks of Being A Wallflower, Kevin and, hell, going back a ways, City Island.

It doesn't all work. Arguably LeBron James makes the movie, with his earnest Aaron's BFF performance, but then he's gone from the last third of the movie. (He shot all his scenes in one week.) And there's an intervention that features a randy Chris Evert, Matthew Broderick and Marv Alpert that broke the suspension of disbelief for me.

I mean, I guess the one-on-one basketball between Hader and James was stretching it. But the intervention seemed sort of pointless.

100 year old Norman Lloyd is in it. That was nice.

Raunchy, though. A lot of mid-coitus humor. A lot of post-coitus humor. A lot of pre-coitus humor. A lot of humor in non-coital situations referencing coitus or other sex acts.

As for Schumer, she's not model thin, and that works pretty well for her, although she's not looking great next to the cheerleaders. Literally. I mean, her body looks fine but cheerleaders are top-notch athletes and she doesn't come close. Which is played for a pretty good, if overlong, gag.

Her face, on the other hand? Well, I'll grant that Fox News has some great makeup people, but the Amy of 2015 looks a bit haggard compared to the one of 2010. I don't know if that's due to her fair complexion, or if they wanted to, to some degree, not over glamourize her, but she doesn't quite pull of the "only four years older than Brie Larson" thing.

She is likeable, and a fine actress (as comedians often are)—her interactions with and about her father being truly fine, emotionally moving work (and apparently based on her real life situation with her father).

Anyway, by this point, you should probably know if you like this sort of thing, this Apatow humor, with the condoms and the bodily fluids and what-not. If you do, this is a reasonably good example of same.

Jeff, Who Lives At Home

The affable Jason Segel, who graced us with his penis in his Forgetting Sarah Marshall, plays a shiftless 30-year-old man-child who—

Wait, I gotta stop this review for a moment. Does it seem to anyone else like all the movies these days center around shiftless young men? Or at least, all the movies centered around young men are either feature them as fantasy heroes—or shiftless layabouts?

Don't men go out in the world to seek their fortune, overcome obstacles and find love any more? I mean, I know there's a trend, of sorts, of young people living at home but The Boy is talking about moving out when he turns 18 next year! (I hope he hangs out a bit but far be it from me to stand in his way.)

I digress.

In Jeff, Who Lives At Home, Segel (as the eponymous Jeff) is a 30-year-old man-child who's puffing it up in the basement when he gets a call from an angry guy looking for Kevin. Jeff is a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, and also a heavy pot-smoker, so he's sure this means something.

He then gets a call from his irritated mother (Susan Sarandon). It's her birthday and she wants him to get some wood glue, so that he can fix the slat on a closet door. That's all she wants out of him, but it's clear she doesn't think he's up to even that minor task.

Reluctantly, Jeff meanders onto the bus, but he's immediately side-tracked by a kid wearing a basketball jersey with the name "Kevin" on the back.

And so goes the story.

Jeff's journey takes him all over the place, as he crosses paths with his (relatively) high-powered paint-store employee older brother (Ed Helms, playing a high-strung asshole, rather than a high-strung nebbish, as in Hangover and Cedar Rapids) and his brother's wife (Judy Greer, The Descendants), as well as his mother and her friend (Rae Dawn Chong).

Somehow, in defiance of stereotypes and melanin, in this movie the 51-year-old Rae Dawn Chong looks older than 65-year-old Susan Sarandon. Not sure how that happened, since Susan Sarandon always looked a little older than her age.

Anyway, the whole Chong/Sarandon part of the story-arc is ridiculously obvious from the get-go.

There are actually quite a few really obvious parts to this movie, which didn't really bug me.

I actually didn't see much in the way of trailers for this film so I don't know how they're pitching it. It's not really whimsical; it's really a bit too heavy for that. It's funny, but The Boy complained it wasn't funny enough, and I noted that it's not really a comedy.

It's really a "light" dysfunctional family film. Trying to think of a film this was most like, atmosphere-wise, Cyrus came to mind. Which, upon reflection, makes sense, given that the Duplass brothers wrote and directed both movies (and Baghead, which also had a similar feel).

So, these guys have a style. You probably know whether you like it. The Boy and The Flower both liked it, though The Boy wanted more humor, as noted. However, you might not like Jeff. Or his brother. Or his mother. (They are listless. Low-key. Irritable. Aimless.)

In which case, you probably won't like this film.

I did, though, because I felt like they were trying, and the movie gives you a reason to hope.

The Hangover, Part Deux

In the least-surprising-sequel category, a sequel 2009's blockbuster hit The Hangover finishes only slightly behind the eighth Harry Potter movie.  A comedy doesn't make half-a-billion dollars these days without a sequel. The Hangover, Part II is a sequel like Escape from L.A. is a sequel: That is to say, almost a remake.

I thought the first was over-rated. I enjoyed it, but it's not on my list of greatest comedies. (It was in my top 45 movies for 2009.) This movie looks to be under-rated. Again, I enjoyed it, but it's not actually going to be on my list of greatest comedies. (And it'll probably make the top 45 cut for 2011.)

You can read an Ace of Spades mega-review here. I have a lot less to say. I had about the same sporadic chuckling throughout this as the last one. I enjoy Ed Helms' character and performance tremendously, and he's got quite a niche as a sort of nerd-plus (see Cedar Rapids). He takes center stage from the too-cool Bradley Cooper and the mostly-idiot-but-savant-when-the-plot-requires Zach Gallafianikis. Newcomer Mason Lee has a small but pivotal role in the story which makes it a little "nicer".

The chemistry seems better this time. Characters recur from the original, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a gimmicky way.

It is more vulgar, darker and has a hint of ominousness to it not in the original. Also: a monkey.

What I'm gathering is that people who loved the original were somewhat disappointed by this. If you just liked the original, you'll probably just like this, too.

In any event, you know if you want to see this based on how you felt about the original. (I guess you'd miss out a bit if you haven't seen the original first, but not that much.)

The Boy was not displeased.

If I had a gripe, it's probably that this movie was called "Part II". As if the first left so many unanswered questions, they had to give us closure. It's not a "Part II" guys. It's not even a "II". It's just a "2". Deal.