Quirky, snappy and enjoyable

Cedar Rapids (2011)
Certified: 16
Duration: 87 minutes
Directed by: Miguel Arteta
Starring: Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Stephen Root, Kurtwood Smith, Sigourney Weaver, Alia Shawkat
KRS release

Cedar Rapids is a quirky, snappy and enjoyable comedy that gives Ed Helms the chance to hog the screen and John C. Reilly the chance to run wild, while providing a touching portrayal by Anne Heche. The cast really gives this film a boost and turn what could have been another a “fish-out-of-water” flick into a charming exercise. Cedar Rapids manages to balance naivety with smuttiness, resulting in a film that has heart.

Life for Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) has never been better. He has never left his home town of Brown Valley, Wisconsin, is happy at work as an insurance salesman at Brown Star Insurance and he has regular sex with recently divorced Macy (Sigourney Weaver) who was his primary school teacher. He has always been in the shadow of super salesman Roger Lemke (Thomas Lennon) who is found dead from autoerotic asphyxiation. His boss Bill (Stephen Root) opts to send him to Cedar Rapids in Iowa replacing Roger. He is to attend a convention for insurance salesmen. For the last three years running, his predecessor had brought home the much coveted Two Diamond excellence award.

Leaving Brown Valley is already a shock; boarding a plane and meeting the rest of the convention attendees is going to be another. Tim needs to impress the convention’s conservative president Orin Helgesson (Kurtwoord Smith) in order to get that award.

He ends up sharing a room with hardworking Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock Jr) who is also the first black man that Tim has ever met and the wild Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly) who, according to Tim’s boss, is the devil incarnate. Then there is the teasing Joan Ostrowski-Fox (Anne Heche) who soon has him doing things he never thought of. Bree (Alia Shawkat), the prostitute who hangs around the hotel, is another source of trouble. By the end of the convention Tim will be a changed man indeed and Cedar Rapids will have left its imprint on him as he will try to survive corruption, decadence and all the other vices on offer at Cedar Rapids.

The film revolves around Ed Helms, a familiar face to cinema audiences as Stu from the Hangover films, and he provides quite a delightful performance. His naivety is exquisite and the way he approaches sex, booze, karaoke, flying and a myriad of other stuff is quite a hoot. He is very likable and makes us want him to emerge as the moral victor.

John C. Reilly provides a tour de force of a performance as he is the film’s vulgar side – the sexual innuendoes never seem to stop spewing out of his mouth. He is also sincere and this redeems him in our eyes. Miguel Arteta directs with a sure hand and never lets the film ride out its steam. The film did deserve to have a more unpredictable ending but and the script plays it too safe.

The end mini credits sequences sees the four salesmen in question doing an advert, promising prospective insurance buyers they will be there with the slogan of “We Got You”. This ensured I left the cinema with a smile on my face.