B-
Like the Iowa town it’s named for, “Cedar Rapids” is friendly, unassuming and just a little dull. A sort of touring company version of “The Hangover” mounted on a smaller scale (it emphasizes the comparison with the line, “What happens in Cedar Rapids, stays in Cedar Rapids,” as well as by starring Ed Helms—who also brings a dollop of “The Office” to the mix), the picture resembles the work of Mike Judge as much as Judd Apatow. That’s not necessarily a good thing.
Helms plays Tim Lippe, a naïve, good-hearted insurance salesman in the agency owned by Bill Krogstad (Stephen Root) in the small Wisconsin town of Brown River. His great joy in life is helping his customers; but he’s also achieved a childhood dream by having an affair with recently-divorced Macy Vanderhei (Sigourney Weaver), the seventh-grade teacher he was infatuated with years earlier.
When his much-liked colleague Roger (Thomas Lennon) dies of auto-asphyxiation, Tim is tapped by Krogstad to travel to Cedar Rapids for the convention Roger was scheduled to attend. His mission is to win for the agency a third ASMI award to add to the ones that Roger had brought back with him the two previous years. But that’s made difficult by the fact that Tim, a small-town fellow who’s never even been on an airplane before, is overwhelmed by Cedar Rapids’ big-town vibe and diverted to the “dark side” by some “bad company.” Not his original roommate Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock), but wild man Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly) who joins them in their suite, and Joan Ostrowski-Fox (Anne Heche), who sees the convention as an opportunity to cut loose once a year. Through them Tim’s introduced to drink, the raucous life, and even a bit of extra-marital sex; and via a young prostitute named Bree (Alia Shawkat) and her trailer-trash family, he has his first experience of drugs, too. And since regional ASMI president Orin Helgesson (Kurtwood Smith) is a prude who demands the highest virtue of those who get the awards he hands out, Tim’s chance of succeeding in getting it seems increasingly remote.
What happens in “Cedar Rapids” is a predictable reversal: the smug, sanctimonious types turn out to be scumbags, and the troublemakers liberate Lippe from his inhibitions and teach him how to live. And, of course, all of the frat-boy shenanigans are mitigated by an underlying sweetness that’s supposed to make them palatable rather than obnoxious—and often does.
Helms anchors the picture with his portrait of a blissfully oblivious, wide-eyed Candide figure confronting an alien environment that challenges his most closely held beliefs and principles; it’s hardly a stretch for him, but it is a part he plays to reliable effect. But Whitlock gets his share of smiles as a straightlaced guy with some hidden talents, and Heche delivers an affecting mixture of rowdiness and poignancy.
But the movie’s sparkplug is undoubtedly Reilly, whose previous forays into big-budget Apatowland floundered but who here, back in the indie territory that’s far more congenial to him, takes charges with a ferocious turn as the darkly zany but absolutely honest Ziegler. What’s remarkable is that the performance dovetails well with the amiably laid-back approach of director Miguel Arteta and the drab Middle America setting captured without frills by cinematographer Chuy Chavez.
“Cedar Rapids” walks a fine line between the condescending and the affectionate, and sometimes trips up. But in the end it draws a picture of its Midwestern characters that’s not nearly as offensive as the ones in most movies set in fly-over territory (think, for example, of Renee Zellweger’s “New in Town”). In the end, though, while not unpleasant, except for Reilly it fails to be distinctive and sprightly enough to be really memorable. In other words, it’s not “Happy, Texas,” but no “Juno” or “Little Miss Sunshine” either. Like many convention destinations, it’s the sort of movie you won’t mind visiting once, but probably won’t want to return to again.