"Identity Thief" - directed by Seth Gordon
I wonder what the genesis of this movie was?
Did someone have the idea of pairing Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy in a comedy and commission a script or was there a script in play and the casting was just fortuitous?
Because whatever success this movie has is almost all related to the casting.
Melissa McCarthy is on a high after her Oscar nominated performance in Kristen Wiig's great "Bridesmaids".
And of course Jason Bateman has cemented his position as a prolific and extremely reliable comedic presence starting with my second favourite tv show of all time "Arrested Development" (Firefly is obviously number one) and moving through hits like "Hancock", "Dodgeball", "Juno" and "Horrible Bosses".
McCarthy and Bateman are a great pairing and I do wonder how it came about.
The laughs that "Identity Thief" does contain are almost all down to the talents of the duo rather than the script by "Hangover II", "Scary Movie 3" and "Scary Movie 4" screenwriter Craig Mazan.
There is a much better movie hiding in here somewhere and it desperately wants to come out.
Early on the script does a great job introducing Bateman's put upon family man and the cunning con woman (McCarthy) as she tricks him into revealing the personal information that she will use to steal his identity.
It presents some great ideas and with everything in place we are all good to go for laughs aplenty.
But they don't come.
"Identity Thief" is a pretty good concept. A woman steals a mans identity and it causes him difficulties at a financially taxing time in his life.
He must therefore track the woman down and deliver her from one end of the country to the other in order to get his named cleared and commence a new job that will keep food on the table for his wife and two (soon to be three) children.
It's a pretty hole-riddled premise but some of the best road / comedy flicks have greater contrivances and still work.
The trick is not letting one aspect rule over the other.
"Due Date" is guilty of this and sadly so is "Identity Thief".
Such is the appeal of the leads that it was a good forty minutes before I started to lose hope that this would work.
Part of the problem is an over reliance on McCarthy to do the sort of whacky character stuff that she is so good at rather than creating set piece comedy bits and letting them pay off.
She is fantastic at this stuff but without strong scripted laughs it just feels like padding rather than well built comedy.
When you look at the somewhat similar John Hughes movie "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" you can see that well written characters have the ability to make us laugh and still have us invested by the time the emotional payoff comes.
When Del's facade becomes apparent to Neal at that movies end it is genuinely touching because the time Hughes' script spent building them up has rewarded us with laughs all the while it was peeling away the layers.
And of course Steve Martin and John Candy are great in the roles.
"Identity Thief" then is excellent performances looking for good material.
Some promise is shown initially with a couple of subtle lines and and the appearance of a host of well known comedy faces.
John Cho from the Harold & Kumar and American Pie movies and the underrated sitcom "Off Center" appears as Bateman's boss.
The T1000 himself Robert Patrick is a skiptracer and the lovely Amanda Peet who deserves a better career than she has had plays Batemans wife.
Remember how extraordinarily good she was in "The Whole Nine Yards"?
Now she only rally gets to play pretty wives.
Melissa McCarthy's real life husband Ben Falcone who was so good as the not-an-air-marshall guy in "Bridesmaids" cameo's as a motel clerk.
Also Jon Favreau has an all too brief and pointless early scene as the the big boss.
This character is set up to be a figure ripe for revenge but it never happens.
This is problem number two.... too many strands that go nowhere.
The fates of many of the people that we meet along the way as Bateman and McCarthy attempt to drive from Florida to Colorado are left hanging.
I could see that the concept had been fleshed out and a direction decided on.
The 'villain' would turn out to be more than just a nasty con woman and of course she and her mark would bond along the way.
It's what road movies do - we expect it.
There is a limit to how much contrivance I will put up with however.
The big one for movies these days is how to deal with cell phones ruining everything.
Imagine of the original "Die Hard" had been made today when everyone has an iPhone in their pocket?
Short movie.
Likewise horror movies have to invent ways of sidelining mobile phones lest scantily clad co-eds simply phone for help at the first sign of a knife wielding maniac.
The road movie has to come up with ways to prevent characters taking an overnight train ride or a quickie aeroplane flight in order to get from origin to destination so that all manner of crazy shenanigans can occur on a lengthier journey.
So not only must cellphones be ditched but credit cards must be cut up, flying phobia's introduced and cars disabled by way of accidents, thefts or animal attack.
Whereas "Midnight Run", "Planes, Trains & Automobiles", "Road Trip" and "Paul" turn these requirements into comedy gold "Identity Thief" gets bogged down by them.
It instead elects to just throw a bunch of characters at the problem.
Most of them have a very tenuous link to proceedings like the incarcerated mobster annoyed at the bad fake credit cards McCarthy has sold him.
They serve merely to make the journey long enough to sustain a movie.
Interestingly Clark Duke ("Hot Tub Time Machine", "Kick Ass") is listed as appearing but I am damned if I could see him so some were cut it seems.
None on the rather lengthy and impressive list of cameo players fare much better with Jonathan Banks, Genesis Rodriguez, Eric Stonestreet, Ellie Kemper and John Cho suffering from terrible underuse.So the film stutters along clumsily lurching towards the pre-determined ending.
Scripter Craig Mazan joins fellow films scribe John August in a weekly podcast about screenwriting called "Script Notes" (subscribe on iTunes HERE) and he recently mentioned the importance of knowing where your story will end so that you can always have an eye to getting it there.
I'm sure that it's good advice but I suspect just letting the characters drive the story to see where it goes would have resulted in a smoother trip rather than stalling them several times lest they get to the finish line before ninety minutes are up.
What we are left with is a movie that would be a decent should you click to it on tv one night while bored but as a big name theatrical release just isn't anywhere near good enough.
It's not terrible by any stretch - just very, very flat and average.
Disappointing.
Did someone have the idea of pairing Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy in a comedy and commission a script or was there a script in play and the casting was just fortuitous?
Because whatever success this movie has is almost all related to the casting.
Melissa McCarthy is on a high after her Oscar nominated performance in Kristen Wiig's great "Bridesmaids".
And of course Jason Bateman has cemented his position as a prolific and extremely reliable comedic presence starting with my second favourite tv show of all time "Arrested Development" (Firefly is obviously number one) and moving through hits like "Hancock", "Dodgeball", "Juno" and "Horrible Bosses".
McCarthy and Bateman are a great pairing and I do wonder how it came about.
The laughs that "Identity Thief" does contain are almost all down to the talents of the duo rather than the script by "Hangover II", "Scary Movie 3" and "Scary Movie 4" screenwriter Craig Mazan.
There is a much better movie hiding in here somewhere and it desperately wants to come out.
Early on the script does a great job introducing Bateman's put upon family man and the cunning con woman (McCarthy) as she tricks him into revealing the personal information that she will use to steal his identity.
It presents some great ideas and with everything in place we are all good to go for laughs aplenty.
But they don't come.
He must therefore track the woman down and deliver her from one end of the country to the other in order to get his named cleared and commence a new job that will keep food on the table for his wife and two (soon to be three) children.
It's a pretty hole-riddled premise but some of the best road / comedy flicks have greater contrivances and still work.
The trick is not letting one aspect rule over the other.
"Due Date" is guilty of this and sadly so is "Identity Thief".
Such is the appeal of the leads that it was a good forty minutes before I started to lose hope that this would work.
Part of the problem is an over reliance on McCarthy to do the sort of whacky character stuff that she is so good at rather than creating set piece comedy bits and letting them pay off.
She is fantastic at this stuff but without strong scripted laughs it just feels like padding rather than well built comedy.
When you look at the somewhat similar John Hughes movie "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" you can see that well written characters have the ability to make us laugh and still have us invested by the time the emotional payoff comes.
When Del's facade becomes apparent to Neal at that movies end it is genuinely touching because the time Hughes' script spent building them up has rewarded us with laughs all the while it was peeling away the layers.
"Identity Thief" then is excellent performances looking for good material.
Some promise is shown initially with a couple of subtle lines and and the appearance of a host of well known comedy faces.
John Cho from the Harold & Kumar and American Pie movies and the underrated sitcom "Off Center" appears as Bateman's boss.
The T1000 himself Robert Patrick is a skiptracer and the lovely Amanda Peet who deserves a better career than she has had plays Batemans wife.
Remember how extraordinarily good she was in "The Whole Nine Yards"?
Now she only rally gets to play pretty wives.
Melissa McCarthy's real life husband Ben Falcone who was so good as the not-an-air-marshall guy in "Bridesmaids" cameo's as a motel clerk.
Also Jon Favreau has an all too brief and pointless early scene as the the big boss.
This character is set up to be a figure ripe for revenge but it never happens.
This is problem number two.... too many strands that go nowhere.
The fates of many of the people that we meet along the way as Bateman and McCarthy attempt to drive from Florida to Colorado are left hanging.
I could see that the concept had been fleshed out and a direction decided on.
The 'villain' would turn out to be more than just a nasty con woman and of course she and her mark would bond along the way.
It's what road movies do - we expect it.
There is a limit to how much contrivance I will put up with however.
The big one for movies these days is how to deal with cell phones ruining everything.
Imagine of the original "Die Hard" had been made today when everyone has an iPhone in their pocket?
Short movie.
Likewise horror movies have to invent ways of sidelining mobile phones lest scantily clad co-eds simply phone for help at the first sign of a knife wielding maniac.
The road movie has to come up with ways to prevent characters taking an overnight train ride or a quickie aeroplane flight in order to get from origin to destination so that all manner of crazy shenanigans can occur on a lengthier journey.
Whereas "Midnight Run", "Planes, Trains & Automobiles", "Road Trip" and "Paul" turn these requirements into comedy gold "Identity Thief" gets bogged down by them.
It instead elects to just throw a bunch of characters at the problem.
Most of them have a very tenuous link to proceedings like the incarcerated mobster annoyed at the bad fake credit cards McCarthy has sold him.
They serve merely to make the journey long enough to sustain a movie.
Interestingly Clark Duke ("Hot Tub Time Machine", "Kick Ass") is listed as appearing but I am damned if I could see him so some were cut it seems.
None on the rather lengthy and impressive list of cameo players fare much better with Jonathan Banks, Genesis Rodriguez, Eric Stonestreet, Ellie Kemper and John Cho suffering from terrible underuse.So the film stutters along clumsily lurching towards the pre-determined ending.
Scripter Craig Mazan joins fellow films scribe John August in a weekly podcast about screenwriting called "Script Notes" (subscribe on iTunes HERE) and he recently mentioned the importance of knowing where your story will end so that you can always have an eye to getting it there.
I'm sure that it's good advice but I suspect just letting the characters drive the story to see where it goes would have resulted in a smoother trip rather than stalling them several times lest they get to the finish line before ninety minutes are up.
What we are left with is a movie that would be a decent should you click to it on tv one night while bored but as a big name theatrical release just isn't anywhere near good enough.
It's not terrible by any stretch - just very, very flat and average.
Disappointing.
| Rated | M forlanguage |
| Running Time: | 111 minutes ( without end credits) |
| Starring: |
| Jason Bateman | --- Sandy Patterson |
| Melissa McCarthy | --- Diana |
| Jon Favreau | --- Harold Cornish |
| Amanda Peet | --- Trish Patterson |
| Genesis Rodriguez | --- Marisol |
| Morris Chestnut | --- Detective Reilly |
| John Cho | --- Daniel Casey |
| Robert Patrick | --- Skiptracer |
| Eric Stonestreet | --- Big Chuck |
| T.I | --- Julian |
| Ryan Gaul | --- Bartender |
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