I probably liked this movie so much because I lived in Iowa for
four years. I thought it was a little gem.
Ed Lippe (Ed Helms), the main character, an idealistic and naive
insurance salesman in small-town Wisconsin, goes to the big city, Cedar Rapids,
for a regional conference in hopes of securing for the third year in a row the
Three Diamonds Award for his company. The man who was originally supposed to
attend the convention died suddenly in an auto-erotic asphyxiation accident!
Although his boss has warned him to stay away from one
particular attendee, Dean Zeigler (John C. Reilly), Ed naturally ends up
rooming with “Deansie” and Ronald Wilkes (Isaiah Whitlock Jr.), an
African-American man whose skin color initially shocks the sheltered Ed. The
three men also hook up with a female insurance agent (Anne Heche).
The plot is predictable. Overgrown adolescent Ed loses his
ideals and learns that the convention and the award are
shallow, hypocritical, and downright corrupt. He becomes a man.
I’ve seen this story lots of times before. Why does this
version work so well?
First of all, the entire cast seems to be having fun, especially
Anne Heche, who, whenever she's on TV or in the movies, acts like she
wants to be somewhere else. Ed Helms is the perfect straight man-child. Even after his illusions about the
award he covets are shattered, he manages to extricate himself in a way that
reinforces his essential goodness and innocence.
However, the real star here is Deansie—the right actor in
the right place at the right time with the right lines to say. Dean is also a
familiar type, the anarchist who just happens to be the most honest man around.
He’s a loud, foul-mouthed, fat, divorced, alcoholic wastrel who burps and farts
his way through the movie. Yet he’s more upright and moral than Orin Helgesson
(Kurtwood Smith), the “respectable” prime mover behind the convention who’s not
above taking bribes.
Ed believes that, in the past, Dean has poached clients from
his boss. But when Dean, who easily confesses to drinking, smoking, and
eating too much and to pinching too many women’s behinds, swears he would never
steal a client, Ed takes him at his word. Why? Because he’s already admitted to
his failings. He has no reason to lie. His fundamental decency fits not only
the person we’ve come to know but also the situation he’s in.
Not so here. Dean helps Ed but never once stops spewing
four-letter words or being totally outrageous—including one of the very last
scenes while the credits are rolling when he manages a feat I’d read about in
my college newspaper but never really thought was possible.
I’m not going to tell you what it is. See the movie for
yourself and find out, while spending an hour and a half with characters who
are hilarious, flawed, and utterly real, thanks to joyful acting and even
better writing.
um, the character Ed plays in the movie is named Tim. Tim Lippe. :-)
ReplyDeleteOops! My bad. Thanks for pointing out my mistake. Still, I hope you enjoyed this little gem of a movie as much as I did.
ReplyDelete