Review: Cedar Rapids

There’s something to be said for a minor work, a solid double, a film that doesn’t break new ground or dazzle with its originality, but rather achieves its own modest aims with skill and charm. A film like Cedar Rapids doesn’t need over the top gags or a high concept premise to work, only a director with a sure sense of understated comedy as well as an able cast that can bring the laughs, but also the heart when it is most needed.

Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is a good-hearted and hopelessly naïve insurance salesman who has never left the small town that he was born in. After his predecessor dies under, shall we say, scandalous circumstances, Tim is chosen by his boss (Steven Root) to travel to Cedar Rapids, Iowa in order to attend a high-profile regional conference in the hopes that their agency can retain the coveted Two Diamond Award that they have won for the past two years. Along the way he is befriended by a group of fellow salespeople: Ronald (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), Dean (John C. Reilly) and Joan (Anne Heche) who show him how to lighten up and enjoy himself within the competitive arena of Midwest Insurance Sales.

As I said before, Cedar Rapids is far from groundbreaking. Plot-wise, things unfold about the way that you’d expect them to, and Helms’ character travels a predictable character arc. But the actors find delightful and unexpected ways to color within the lines of this standard framework. Ed Helms has long been impressing on TV’s The Office and in film roles like The Hangover, but rarely has his clueless nice guy shtick been so well utilized. Lippe is a character who is so hopeless that he is flustered beyond belief at the first sight of his African-American roommate Ronald (with Isiah Whitlock portraying perhaps the least threatening person on the planet). Helms plays his part perfectly, always allowing the humor to come from his character, which allows us to laugh at him and sympathize with him in equal measure. Likewise, Anne Heche allows Joan to turn on a dime from raunchy to sweet, and her overt flirtations with Tim eventually develop into something more interesting, an understated affection that is nonetheless a welcome reprieve from the quick-fix romantic pairings in most Hollywood fare. Isiah Whitlock Jr. is often hilarious as the almost emotionless Ronald, who gets his moment to shine with perhaps my favorite running joke in the entire film (involving, funnily enough given his role on the show, HBO’s The Wire). Other performers like Stephen Root and Sigourney Weaver (in a funny part as Helm’s grade-school teacher who he’s now having an affair with), bring personality to their minor parts.

Special mention must be made of John C. Reilly. Reilly has become one of those performers who automatically enlivens any film he’s in. In a departure from his earlier dramatic persona in such films as Magnolia and Chicago, he has settled into a new comedic style that he inhabits with gusto. Dean, like his character in Step-Brothers and Talladega Nights, is an overgrown manchild who can say the stupidest, most ribald things with the utmost sincerity. He is someone who will handily steal any scene that he’s in, bringing a jolt of energy to the laid-back energy of this film. Watching him feels like you’re watching an actor whose every performance should be treasured, a comedic persona that is special and quite unique. If nothing else, Cedar Rapids should be commended for giving Reilly the room to create yet another memorable character.

Luckily Cedar Rapids has other pleasures to offer. The script, while conventional, is executed with gusto from the game cast. Miguel Arteta’s direction is unobtrusive, submerging the characters and the audience in the flat, blandly pleasant Midwest hotel in which the majority of the film takes place. Arteta’s style suggests something like a less sharply satirical Mike Judge, neatly evoking the staid locations and dull workday drudgery that pervades these characters lives without skewering it as in Judge’s Office Space or Extract. Not every film has to be a slam-dunk, life-changing experience. Sometimes a film can sneak up on you, charming you in unexpected ways and leaving you with a smile on your face and the pleasure of having seen some of today’s best comedic performers doing what they do best. By achieving this, Cedar Rapids manages to be a major success in a minor key.