Identity Thief (R)

As a follow-up to the hilarious “Horrible Bosses,” Seth Gordon brings us “Identity Thief,” a film that isn’t the gut-buster everyone was expecting, but it is quite funny.

Mild-mannered businessman Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) travels from Denver to Miami to confront the deceptively harmless-looking woman Diana (Melissa McCarthy) who has been living it up after stealing Sandy’s identity.

This film follows a traditional road trip formula that is structured to get asses in seats, eyes on the screen, and money in the studio’s pocket. Thankfully, it’s fairly deserving of people’s money. It’s mostly entertaining, but often predictable. It suffers many flaws on the way to the end, but ultimately finds its way, thanks to the great comedy team that is Bateman and McCarthy.

Bateman plays the straight edge here, lobbing up lines so McCarthy can smash down some hysterical comebacks. A lot are aces,but some are just a little too out there, and even for a crude comedy, some of it’s too raunchy. A scene with McCarthy and Big Chuck is only funny because of poor Bateman hiding away in the bathroom. It’s nice that he is able to make the audience laugh a few times.

“Identity Thief” suffers greatly from poor comedic momentum. While it is funny in the beginning, and begins to be hilarious when Bateman and McCarthy are united for the first time, there are times during the movie’s progression where five minutes go by without a joke. It forgets to make its audience to laugh, and that’s something that a comedy just shouldn’t do. However, part of this is to blame on the excessive marketing campaign. If you haven’t been living under a rock since December, you would know that a good 60% of the film’s best jokes are revealed in the trailers. Thankfully, they’re still slightly funny when they come around, and are, honestly very funny.

The big laughs are separated by some good chuckles, so that’s decent. There are also some nice surprises in this film as a whole. Diana’s character receives a nice emotional layer, as she seems to be stealing identities because she doesn’t know her own. Because of this, many might be able to relate to the material and find a solid emotional connectivity to her character. This adds a sweetness to her, and the film in general, when car chases aren’t going on or when Diana isn’t throat-punching 92% of the people she meets. It is also nice to see her character transformation go from antagonist to anti-hero and so forth.

Back to the flaws, since the road trip formula has been overused, it’s hardly original. The film is also very crowded. There are so many antagonists, and they keep getting added in to make the film longer, not better. At first, Sandy is chasing Diana. Then Diana finds herself in trouble with a drug lord to whom she sold bad credit cards, and his drug dealers (Genesis Rodriguez and T.I.) come after her. Then, as a pleasant surprise, Robert “T-1000” Patrick is back in his element: chasing people. He portrays a bounty hunter who is also after Diana. Then there are cops who are also chasing Diana, and at times, Sandy. It’s a real jumbled nightmare when they are all chasing each other and their paths cross. The conflicts also get solved almost too conveniently and unrealistically, so for some of it you have to turn off the logical part of your brain. But it’s better than having no conflict at all, like last year’s “The Guilt Trip” which is almost completely bereft of conflict.

Due to all the antagonists, the writing often comes off as lazy. Especially part of the haphazard ending, which makes the writer, Craig Mazin (writer of “The Hangover Part II” and “Scary Movie 3”), come off as completely disorganized and idiotic. He does not know whether to end it off as mean-spirited, dramatic, sweet, or hilarious, so he practically decides to do all four.

– by Daniel Prinn