About The Movie:
Melissa McCarthy plays Diana, an unseemly
Floridian con artist who – in the opening scene – dupes her mark into sharing
his vital statistics (name, date of birth, credit card number) over the phone.
That would be Sandy Bigelow Patterson (Jason Bateman) a mild-mannered Denver
accountant with a gorgeous wife (Amanda Peet), two precocious kids, and a
selfish boss (Jon Favreau) who is screwing him at every turn.
Sandy’s thrown a lifeline by an
entrepreneurial colleague (John Cho) starting his own company. Better salary. A
vice president’s title. It all sounds too good to be true. Unfortunately,
before Sandy can move in to the corner office, he’s told that his credit scores
are in the toilet and he’s wanted in the Sunshine State for skipping a
mandatory court date. His identity has been stolen.
What Is Good/Bad About The Movie:
Sandy convinces his employers to give
him one week to lure Diana back to Denver. He cooks up an elaborate sting
operation that will trick the diminutive crook into confessing her crimes.
Apparently flying from Florida isn’t an option (because a deceptive identity
thief like Diana supposedly doesn’t have false credentials that will get her on
an airplane), so Mazin and director Seth Gordon do their best impersonation of
Due Date, putting polar opposites behind the wheel for a series of ludicrous,
violent and demeaning pit stops.
McCarthy and Bateman riff on
variations of the established snob-and-slob personalities. The
pair does find ways to make the inevitable odd-couple cliché click, though.
Thief works best when its leads can dance around whatever silly situation Mazin
hands them, be it a motel tryst with an amorous cowboy (Modern Family’s Eric
Stonestreet) or the film’s purest blast of guilt-free comedy involving Bateman
and a six-foot-long snake.
For whatever reason, though, Thief
keeps slowing down to introduce new characters through subplots that ultimately
add little to the mix. Comedy might be the only genre that can be done in by
too much plot. Do we really need Genesis Rodriguez and hip-hop artist T.I. as
gangsters looking to kill Diana because she scammed them with bogus credit
cards? No. They answer to Paolo (the great Jonathan Banks), a Godfather-type
mob boss who pulls strings from his prison cell.
Identity Thief isn’t odious. It’s
just predictable. Lazy comedies cast the overweight McCarthy as the bullish
deadbeat and the conservative Bateman as the buttoned-down bean counter. Gordon
could have helped his film establish its own identity by having his talented
leads switch characters. Make Bateman ditch his uptight comedic crutch to play
a low-life criminal dirt bag. Gamble on McCarthy as the respectable female
executive who’s victimized by a con. The gifted comedian has to start playing against
type in big-screen comedies if she wants to be remembered as anything other
than that heavy-set woman who crapped herself in a Kristen Wiig comedy.
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