Sometimes, you just know a movie isn’t going to be any good. True you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, or in this case a movie by its poster or trailer. Wait maybe you’re supposed to judge it by the trailer…after all, the point of the trailer is to get you to watch the movie, right? Well, “Cedar Rapids” stars Ed Helms and is about a guy that goes to an insurance seminar…zzzzz….exactly.
Ed Helms, who you know from “The Office”, plays Tim Lippe, a sheltered kind of loser insurance salesman, who is banging his former teacher, played by Sigourney Weaver. Tim gets the chance of a lifetime to represent his insurance company at a seminar and try and win some stupid award that his agency wins every year. He gets to go because the guy that usually gets the gig just died in an auto-erotic asphyxiation accident. So, Tim goes and he’s way out of his element.
He goes to this seminar in Iowa and meets some other insurance agents played by John C. Reilly, Anne Heche and Isiah Whitlock, Jr. but none of them are particularly interesting either. Tim is slightly obsessed with this teacher he is banging so he keeps calling her but he’s obviously misinterpreted their relationship. He hooks up with Anne Heche but she’s already married and ya get the impression she might be the town bicycle.
John C. Reilly is kind of a loud mouth obnoxious idiot and Washington Jr. is just kinda there. He has a good line now and then but for the most part he doesn’t help nor hurt the movie. The script is dull and it reflects in the movie. It’s hard to make a movie about insurance agents at an insurance seminar all that interesting and this movie is the perfect example of just how hard that can be.
The movie seems to know its boring because it spins out of control for a while. Tim meets a hooker, played by Alia Shawkat (“Arrested Development”), who challenges him to break free of his boring life. So, he ends up at a party smoking crack. Yeah, it’s one of those movies where every scene tries to one up the other and be out of control and wild but really its all just kind of stupid.
“Cedar Rapids” is too long, slow and boring at times with a few good jokes mixed in but even when it tries to have a plot it feels forced. That being said, there are a few funny moments but they are too few and far between. Ed Helms may someday be able to carry a movie but he’s going to need a much better script than the one he had here.
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Cedar Rapids trailer:
Photos and trailer are property of 20th Century Fox Corporation.