IDENTITY THIEF: That’s a Terrible F*cking Name

Identity Thief (2013) – Directed by Seth Gordon – Starring Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy, Robert Patrick, John Cho, Jon Favreau, Amanda Peet, Genesis Rodríguez, T.I., Morris Chestnut, Eric Stonestreet, and Maggie Elizabeth Jones.

It was an afternoon of pleasant surprises: the weather was nicer than I thought it would be, IDENTITY THIEF is funnier than I thought it would be, and when I turned my iPhone back on after the movie, all of my contacts were mysteriously erased.

Okay, so that last one isn’t a pleasant surprise, but I was able to take Darwin for a long walk this morning before the movie and I was constantly amused by IDENTITY THIEF throughout the film. The film contains a handful of laugh out loud moments and if you like Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy (as I do), then there’s no reason you won’t like IDENTITY THIEF.

Directed by Seth Gordon (who directed the excellent documentary The King of Kong and the very funny Horrible Bosses), THIEF is a standard anti-buddy road comedy. Diana (McCarthy) is the titular identity thief, and when she steals the identity of Sandy Bigelow Patterson (Bateman), he takes the law into his own hands and flies from Colorado to Florida in order to bring her back to Denver to put everything right and allow him to keep his new job.

When Patterson gets to Florida he quickly finds Diana, but then criminals Marisol and Julian (Genesis Rodríguez and T.I.) show up for retribution for bad deeds Diana has enacted on them, and a bounty hunter (Robert Patrick) joins the mix, adding a small element of a chase film into the mix.

The focus is on Bateman and McCarthy, though, and the success of the film is thanks to their interaction. Sandy is the do-gooder and Diana is the shady con artist and the film does an excellent job both playing their differences off one another and then showing them growing together. THIEF is running the same ground as a film like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, in that these two characters are definitely not pals at the start of the film but come to truly like one another as the story unfolds. Sandy is a nice guy but he’s not a total schlub who lets the world walk all over him. He’s understandably upset at Diana and doesn’t let her forget it for a good long while.

Critically, it’s Diana who first acts on his behalf. In a very funny sequence where Diana spins a lie at a bar to Big Chuck (Eric Stonestreet) about how Sandy likes to watch her with other men, Sandy ends up locking himself in the bathroom as Diana and Chuck have sex. It’s funny but there’s a really deep undertone to the scene – Diana’s actions are motivated by her own loneliness. We see this at the beginning of the movie when a bartender tells her no one in the bar actually likes her, they just like buying her drinks, and it runs through the movie until Diana comes clean about her origins of being abandoned by her parents and running through multiple foster homes. Here in the hotel room, once Sandy shuts himself in the bathroom, Diana intends to drug Chuck and abscond with Chuck and Sandy’s wallets and valuables. Instead of drugging Chuck, however, she ends up being moved by his story of not having been with anyone since his wife (she initially thinks he’s rejecting her, with gives the scene some gravitas), and decides to have sex with him.

McCarthy does a fantastic job here balancing Diana’s cons with her real emotions and I’m often left momentarily wondering whether we’re seeing the real Diana or the fake Diana. While she’s moved enough to have sex with Chuck, she has not undergone the full conversion, yet, as after he passes out she locks Sandy in the bathroom, takes Chuck and Sandy’s stuff, and leaves. When she hits the car, however, a phone call from Sandy’s family catches her off guard. She looks at the photo of his kids and has a change of heart. She returns to the room just as Sandy breaks the door down, and she tells him she was just out checking on the ice, and then crawls pathetically into bed.

Strawberry Quik in powder form. I drank the hell out of this stuff as a kid, even though I never understood why that pink bunny is wearing a strawberry for a hat.

Now that Diana has earned some sympathy points with the viewers, the film then immediately allows Sandy to have both a jerk and redemption moment. At checkout the next morning, he’s on edge and engages in a really funny exchange with a bored clerk. (“Did you enjoy your stay?” “No.”) A hungover Diana has asked him to get her some Strawberry Quik. Sandy asks the clerk if they have any and she says yes, but he doesn’t buy her any. When he’s getting himself some coffee, however, Robert Patrick kidnaps her and Sandy is quick to run after them. Now, yes, he needs her to get his good name back, but as she rightly points out later, he calls her his friend during his verbal exchange with Patrick, and his actions seem to be partially motivated out of genuine concern.

Sandy ends up crashing Patrick’s van and after he pulls Diana from the wreckage, there’s a small back and forthe between the two of them. I can’t remember exactly what was said, but what I do remember is that it was both quickly the exchange transpired and how none of it was all that important. It was a genuine exchange, though, that felt very conversational and real, and not just a set-up and punch line. I like that – Sandy and Diana are well-rounded characters, and maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but in comedies now I’m much more interested in movies with good characters in a good story that’s amusing than I am in watching a film that is constantly going for the quick hit-and-run jokefest approach.

The ending of IDENTITY THIEF is really something fantastic, and had me leaving the theater feeling up. From the moment Sandy takes Diana to his house and through to Sandy’s family visiting Diana in jail, the film has an almost perfect mix of being funny, touching, and even a little sad. The resolution of Diana going to jail, but Sandy and his family visiting her hit a perfect note, and the funniest line of the movie (the title of this review) comes right at the end.

IDENTITY THIEF isn’t quite as funny as either of Bateman or McCarthy’s best efforts, but it is a really good film. I only went to see it because I was in the mood for some popcorn, but I had a smile on my face from start to finish.

PAUL: I’ve Been Waiting for This Since Mac and Me

Paul (2011) – Directed by Greg Mottola – Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Blythe Danner, Joe Lo Truglio, John Carroll Lynch, Jane Lynch, David Koechner, Jesse Plemons, Sigourney Weaver, Jeffrey Tambor, and Steven Spielberg.

Much like Super 8, PAUL is a love letter to Steven Spielberg, but unlike the J.J. Abrams film, PAUL isn’t a celebration of Spielberg’s films as much as it is a celebration of what the films meant to fans.

We see this in evidence right from the start as Greame (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost) make their first pilgrimage to Sand Diego Comic-Con. These guys are fans and I appreciate how they’re fans without an over-fetishization of geek or nerd culture, which is a trend that has pretty much run its course. They are who they are, definitely fans but also definitely themselves, too. Clive is a writer and Graeme is an artist, and they’re not just visiting from England to experience SDCC, but to take a road trip through some alien hot spots in the American West.

We stay in San Diego just long enough to establish that these two guys love their sci-fi, and then they’re off in an RV. At a roadside diner where Jane Lynch works, Graeme laughs along with two redneck stereotypes (David Koechner and Jesse Plemons), who decide to interpret his joviality as hostile instead of friendly. When Clive comes out of the bathroom, the two rednecks make fun of Graeme and Clive for being gay.

Which they’re not, but which is also a recurring joke in the film.

Graeme and Clive hightail it out of there and accidentally put a dent in the rednecks’ truck on their way out of the parking lot. Later on that night, as they stop to take some pictures at another sight on their stop, they see some approaching headlights and wrongly assume its the rednecks. Fleeing the scene, they are quickly overcome by the headlights, and as the car whizzes past, the car wrecks and the boys stop to have a look.

The rednecks are the worst part of the film because they are never anything but their base stereotypes. Many of PAUL’s conflict are derived from pitting different social groups against each other: nerds, rednecks, the deeply religious, the bad ass Mr. FBI Man, but only the rednecks never reveal themselves to be something more. Luckily, despite their introduction as the film’s first antagonist, they are not major players in the movie.

At the scene of the accident, the two Brits meet Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), who solicits their help in him getting home. Grame proves himself the cooler customer, more willing to accept an actual alien in their presence, while Clive passes out and pees himself. From there on, we’ve got a combo buddy comedy/road trip with Paul the alien as the third wheel tag-along.

Paul is designed to be a mid-sized alien with very human tendencies: he likes to smoke and drink and swear, and there are times where this gets a bit much. There is some over-reliance on the comedy coming simply from Paul doing these things, as if an alien who swears is, in and of itself, inherently funny. Maybe if this film had come out in 1987, this would have worked, but now it already feels kinda stale – if Paul is intended to be funny, he needs to be funny irregardless of being a little grey alien with big blue eyes.

The most interesting aspect of this film is simply watching two different comedy camps come together. Up front is the Pegg and Frost duo as PAUL’s main stars and it’s co-writers, and in less-obvious roles are part of the Arrested Development family in the persons of director Greg Mottola, and actors Jason Bateman and Jeffrey Tambor. It’s a winning combo, with the deadpan-jerk humor of Bateman and Tambor blending nicely with the disbelieving-nice guys style of Pegg and Frost.

There is a third wheel here and that’s the inclusion of Seth Rogen as the voice of Paul. Mottola has a history with the Apatow/Rogen family, too, as he also directed Superbad and was a director on Undeclared, so Rogen isn’t completely alone here. Personally, I’ve had my fill of Rogen’s Big Loud Idiot type, and even though Paul doesn’t entirely fit that mold, Rogen’s voice keeps pushing the character in that direction. It’s hard to think of Paul as either intelligent or likable with that awful voice coming out of his mouth, but it’s certainly not enough to sink the character or the film.

Graeme, Clive, and Paul pull the RV into an RV park for the night, where they meet Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a one-eyed, over-protected daughter of a religious zealot. PAUL takes all kinds of shots at God and religion and Paul becomes the (celebrated) serpent in the Garden. When Ruth starts espousing her faith (and it’s not like she says, “I like Jesus,” because she actually says, “The world is 4,000 years old and God created it in six days.”) Paul loses his marbles and starts debating her from inside the RV’s bathroom, even though he’s supposed to be hiding. Paul ends up getting Ruth to turn away from her faith, in part because he shows her his entire life story through a mind link and in part because he cures her dead eye.

I have some issues with this – not as a Christian, because even though I was raised Catholic I don’t consider myself aligned with any religion these days, but just as a matter of logic. Simply because the Bible does not take aliens into account does not mean that their existence disproves the concepts of God and Creationism. I suppose the point here is that because Ruth is such a strict Christian that Paul’s ability to show her that the world is more than 4,000 years old becomes the crack that breaks the dam. It’s simplistic, but it fits the film’s general theme, which is that the group dynamic is more important than an individual’s personal issues.

I really like how PAUL picks up people as the film moves along. First, the road trip is about Graeme and Clive’s adventure, then it’s folds in the plot in getting Paul home, and then when Ruth is added, it folds in a subplot of self-discovery. It’s a really good script that’s only sidelined (like most comedies) by a weak joke here and there. The nice thing, however, is that PAUL is every bit as interested in telling a story as it is in simply telling jokes.

There’s plenty of nods to Spielberg (and the director’s voice even makes an appearance), but the funniest reference is when Clive (who feels like he’s blown it by passing out and peeing himself when he first met Paul) is trying to explain his actions to Paul and he says, “I’ve been waiting for this since Mac and Me and I feel like I’ve blown it!”

Mac and Me.

It’s a great reference because Mac and Me is widely recognized as a cheap E.T. knock off, yet that doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who like the movie, which furthers strengthens the idea that Graeme and Clive are just regular fans.

It’s the combination of sci-fi love, camaraderie, and jokes that work better because they’re amusing rather than because they’re laugh out loud funny. I mean, how can you not like a movie that sees Clive referring to Paul as Short Round? PAUL hits all the right notes for a good time. It’s not hysterical (except for Jason Bateman, who’s very, very funny here), but it is constantly amusing.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: The Story of a Wealthy Family Who Lost (Not Quite) Everything

Arrested Development (2003 – 2006): The Complete Series – Starring Jason Bateman, Portia de Rossi, Jeffrey Tambor, Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, David Cross, Jessica Walter, and Ron Howard.

Regular readers here at the Anxiety will notice it’s been rather quiet here of late. Partly this is a result of me getting ready for the Pertwee re-watch/review that will start as soon as the Stanley Cup is finished. Partly this is a result of me getting my next book ready for publication (the proof arrived today). And partly this is a result of me having just watched the entire 53-episode run of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.

I try to stay away from “Best of” lists and overly hyperbolic statements like, “This is the funniest show ever,” but ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT would definitely be on the former and could make a claim on the latter.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT focuses on the Bluth family, a dysfunctional, wealthy family that’s just seen the family patriarch arrested for a whole slew of crimes (everything from embezzlement to treason) related to his real estate development company. Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) is the middle son and prior to his father’s arrest had expected to be named CEO of the company; when he’s passed over, he decides he’s going to take his son, George Michael (Michael Cera), and leave, but he ends up staying in order to keep the company afloat and the family together.

What makes ARRESTED so good is that all of the characters have both admirable and deplorable characteristics, running across a spectrum from George Michael (the most innocent) to Lucille (the most manipulative). Mitchell Hurwitz and his team of writers do an excellent job working the characters’ admirable and deplorable characteristics against one another, and while Michael is the star of the show and the “good son,” he’s far from perfect. Michael is the most self-aware of what his own father (Jeffrey Tambor) did to him and his older brother Gob (pronounced like the Biblical Job), and he’s determined to have a close, loving relationship with George Michael instead of one based on manipulation and lies. And he does, but he misses the larger picture and in his own way, Michael is just as smothering, continually attempting to balance his focus on work and handling the rest of the family by forcing George Michael to continue to do things they did when they were younger.

Jason Bateman is fantastic as the mostly decent would-be savior who loves his family despite his continual contempt for their behavior. He wants to be wanted, and it’s to the credit of the show that they eventually call him on this point, mocking his repeated insistence that he’s leaving them behind and taking George Michael away to live someplace else. It’s a really brilliant narrative move – had we known this at the start, of course, the whole tenor of those opening episodes changes, but when it gets revealed later on that he’s done this over and over again, it makes the character seem all the more complex and flawed.

Unlike most sitcoms, where every character has a function to play, in ARRESTED everyone has an arc to undertake. The result is that even though the characters typically generate the same kind of humor from episode to episode (George Michael’s awkwardness, Gob’s ego, Buster’s mother issues, etc.), the show can do quite a bit with them as they take that comedy through some actual … wait for it … development. We see George Michael’s awkwardness with his dad and with girls as he grows away from the first and towards the latter as he tries to become his own man. Likewise, Buster (Tony Hale) is constantly trying to grow away from his mother and towards any sense of self-individuation. Gob is constantly looking for his father’s approval, which has resulted in him having an ego that far outstrips his abilities as a son and a magician.

The show also wrings a tremendous amount of humor out of its use of a narrator. Ron Howard does the uncredited duty (though he does make an appearance in the final episode) and he’s the most likable character on the show. His almost folksy approach helps to balance the acidity of the characters which is needed because these really aren’t very likable characters. Almost all of them struggle with issues related to self-esteem and so it’s a brilliant decision to have Howard, who has always seemed to be completely comfortable with who “he” is (meaning, his characters).

The show isn’t perfect, because what could be perfect over 53 episodes? You do have to at least question any show that doesn’t take full advantage of its greatest talent, and even though they give him two roles to play (George, Sr., and George’s twin brother, Oscar), I wish the show could have found more to do with Jeffrey Tambor. George spends the first season in prison and the second living in the attic, and while the show needs to keep him locked up, he’s the one character that doesn’t really get an arc to fulfill. He’s in jail, he wants out, but when he gets out he has to stay hidden in the attic. Oscar just doesn’t match up with George as a character; he’s a stoner in love with his brother’s wife and the weakest character on the show. It’s to Tambor’s immense talent, however, that he makes these two brothers so completely different.

There’s a weak set of stories in season 3 involving the British. George Sr. tells Michael the Brits have set him up and made him a patsy, and Michael ends up involved with a British woman (Charlize Theron) and her uncle (Dave Thomas). He falls for the woman, but then thinks she’s involved in what’s going on with his dad and things blow up. Then they get together and he realizes she’s mentally challenged. It’s not bad, and Theron and Thomas are good, but the story just doesn’t work as well as what surrounds it.

On the other hand, it contains one of the absolute funniest moments in TV history when we learn, via flashback, that Buster once destroyed the family kitchen because he was mad at the Bluth’s housekeeper and he thought that’s where Lupe lived. Later, we see his throwing a dust buster at a public transit bus, and we’re told that Buster thinks he’s throwing Lupe’s favorite toy at her car.

There’s several great guest shots over the course of the show, with Henry Winkler chief among them. Playing the Bluth’s hapless attorney, Winkler is tremendous in his ineffectualness.

In-jokes are all over the place, too, such as Justine Batmeman appearing in the episode “Family Ties,” a reference both to her being Jason’s real life sister as well as “Family Ties” being the name of her former show. There’s a few Fonzie references for Winkler, and Will Arnett’s real life wife shows up to play his in-show wife.

It’s the variety of humor – sometimes clever, sometimes absurd, sometimes referencing the internal narrative and other times referencing the external world – that really sets ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT apart. This is a fantastic show that cleverly rips on its own characters. What the creators know is that they’ve got some unlikable and shallow characters here and it skewers them for us, and it humanizes them by making their faults real. They’re a family of selfish people that love each other because they’re stuck with each other.