You say that insurance sales is a prime subject for juvenile comedy? Well, you're in luck!
Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is an insurance salesman at a small company in rural Wisconsin. After the death of his colleague (by auto-erotic asphyxiation, of course) he's sent to a regional insurance conference in Cedar Rapids, an annual event of drunken debauchery. Tim is a grown nerd and a manchild who is having a relationship with his former junior high teacher (Sigourney Weaver). He has never done anything substantial in his life and the puddle-jumper flight to Cedar Rapids is his first time on an airplane.
When he gets to the conference he finds he'll be sharing a room with Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly) a wild man who loves to drink and party more than he loves selling insurance policies. Tim has to concentrate on the task of getting a top rating from this regional group while Ziegler pushes him in all the wrong directions, including into bed with Joan Ostrowski-Fox (Anne Heche), a married red-head from Omaha.
There is a lot of funny and silly stuff here, and a lot of surprises including one of the strangest and most straightforward crack-pipe-smoking sequences I've ever seen (because that's funny!). There's also a lot of rather dumb, preachy sentimentality that really has no place in the story.
The third act is typically dull here -- I say typically because it's rare for a comedy like this to be solid for three-straight acts. I don't really care that Tim is a moralist or that he loves being a goody-two-shoes. This movie is not about good people - it's about bad and dirty people. Stop trying to force me to feel something deep for these cartoonish characters.
This is an OK movie. It's not brilliant, but much better than a lot of stuff out there (30 Minutes or Less, Bridesmaids). I don't know why people would say it's one of the best of 2011... but some people thought that about The Help, which is much more offensive.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
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