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.

BEN AND KATE: First Thoughts on FOX’s Fractured Family Sitcom Awesomeness

Ben and Kate (2012) – Season 1, Episodes 1-4 – Starring Dakota Johnson, Nat Faxon, Lucy Punch, Maggie Elizabeth Jones, and Echo Kellum.

America, why are you not watching this show? Seriously, it’s in moments like this that I hate you. The only reason that I can imagine you’re not watching this show is either because you don’t know about it, or because you don’t like to laugh.

BEN AND KATE is a seriously funny show.

The premise here is that irresponsible Ben (Nat Faxon) has returned home and moved in with his responsible younger sister, Kate (Dakota Johnson, daughter of Sonny Crocket and Melanie Griffith). The comedy revolves around the juxtaposition of Ben and Kate’s opposite approach to life – Ben the dreamer and Kate the responsible one. The series regulars are rounded out with Kate’s smart daughter Maddie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones), her British co-worker BJ (Lucy Punch), and Ben’s best friend, Tommy (Exho Kellum). All five actors can be counted on to generate laughs, and BEN AND KATE wonderfully contrasts the absurdity of Ben, BJ, and Tommy with Kate’s uptight, conservative approach to life.

It’s understandable that Kate is the grown-up in the show as she’s the one with a daughter, but the program beautifully balances her and Ben’s strengths and weaknesses. At its core, BEN AND KATE is about how Ben’s dreams never come true because he gives up on them too quickly while Kate’s dreams have been buried beneath her responsibility. Balance is really key to this show – take episode 4, where Ben decides to throw Kate the 21st birthday party she never had because she was pregnant with Maddie. For her 26th birthday, then, Ben has a house party, inviting Kate’s crazy best friend from high school. Ben and BJ end up ditching the party so they can go steal a tree from Ben’s ex-girlfriend’s house, while Kate and High School Pal go downtown to get crazy. BJ ends up sticking up for Ben with his ex-girlfriend by making out with him in front of the ex, while Tommy again gives voice to his long-time desire for Kate. He doesn’t get to make with her, but at the end of the episode, she gives him a kiss on the cheek and a few words of encouragement, while BJ’s make out session with Ben is forgotten.

If I tune in to a random episode of a sitcom, I just want it to be funny, but if a show wants me to stick around long-term, it’s got to have characters I care about and it’s got to show some narrative strength. BEN AND KATE scores on both accounts. Why the show really works for me – even beyond the laughs it generates – is that it never loses sight of the fact that these five people care about each other. There’s varying degrees of caring here, but this is clearly a unit. Where a show like Modern Family shows how the nuclear family has expanded, BEN AND KATE go in the opposite direction, and speak to (and for) the fractured family and how people who randomly enter your life can become every bit as important (and often moreso) than blood relations.

That latter point puts BEN AND KATE in the same ballpark as a show like Community, and like that show, BEN AND KATE generates a good amount of its comedy from absurd humor. The difference is that where Community embraces that absurdity in every aspect of an episode, BEN AND KATE largely keep the (relatively mild) absurdity to the dialogue. At breakfast, the non-Kate people are planning Kate’s birthday. Maddie (who’s 5 or 6, remember) says she wants her mom to have a mermaid party, BJ tells her that’s a dumb idea and when Maddie insists it isn’t, BJ tells the kid she can’t even spell mermaid and if she can, they can have the party.

“M,” Madde begins, “U-”

BJ is victorious and Ben looks to his niece and says, “It’s tough to see you choke like that.”

There’s a sweetness, too, in BEN AND KATE, typically shown about once an episode where one of the siblings says something really nice to the other. Like when Kate is struggling in the premiere episode, and Ben tells her she needs to relax. “You’ve made one mistake in your life,” he tells her, referencing her getting pregnant, “and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.” Or in the fourth episode, when we see Kate spending her birthdays alone at a ice cream shop. This solitary manner of spending her birthday is the entire reason Ben wants to throw his sister a big party, but at the end of the episode, after each has had their own wacky adventure, Kate tells Ben that she was never alone on her birthday, and the show cuts back to the ice cream scenes to reveal that Maddie was always with her.

Nat Faxon and Dakota Johnson are really great together. Faxon expertly pulls off the idiot dreamer I can’t help but like, while Johnson makes me want to step inside my TV and help her out. Both actors do a great job (in very different ways) of making me always remember that these are two people for whom life has not worked out as they had hoped.

BEN AND KATE is just a really funny show that’s put together really well. It’s my favorite new show of the 2012 fall season. So watch it, or I’ll come to your house and give you a stern talking to.