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.

THE KING OF KONG: There’s Certain People I Don’t Want to Spend Too Much Time With

The King of Kong (2007) – Directed by Seth Gordon – Starring Steve Wiebe, Billy Mitchell, Walter Day, Brian Kuh, and Steve Sanders.

I love documentaries on obscure subjects, and while I am not unfamiliar with Donkey Kong, and while I was aware that there was competitive gaming going on, I really knew nothing about this ongoing battle for the Donkey Kong world record. Seth Gordon’s doc on Steve Wiebe’s attempt to break Billy Mitchell’s long-standing record is an engaging examination of the good guy challenger and the egotistical champion, the former trying to break the latter’s record and the latter’s attempt to do everything he can to not man up and play the former head-to-head.

Ultimately, I don’t even care about who gets the world record because the real story here is not Wiebe’s attempt to break the record, but the challenge of an outsider to be recognized by the establishment, and the quest of a man to mark out a piece of the world that he can claim as his own.

KING OF KONG casts Wiebe as a nice guy who’s never lived up to his potential. He was laid off from his job the day he signed the mortgage for his house, and when his wife tells us that Steve seemingly had the gifts of brains, music, and athleticism, but that it’s never all quite come together, you can see the pain of a woman who loves her husband and wants to see him reach that promise because she knows it eats away at him. You can also see that she’s a bit flummoxed that Steve has decided on making his mark with Donkey Kong, but she supports him as best she can.

I wish the film would have spent a bit more time with the wife to show the cost to the family of Steve’s pursuit, but his wife, son, and daughter each get a moment where they question what Steve is doing. In the middle of what becomes Steve’s record-breaking game at home, we can hear his son yelling in the background for his dad to come help him and to stop playing Donkey Kong. It’s the kind of real anger that tells you the kid is probably more sick of his dad ignoring him in order to play the arcade game than he actually needs help doing anything, and Steve’s decision to keep playing the game shows just how far his quest has gone towards becoming an obsession.

His daughter delivers the most damning line of the film when she remarks to her dad that she didn’t realize the Guinness Book of World Records was that big of a deal, and that some people ruin their lives trying to get into the book. That she says this as the family is headed to a tournament in which her dad is trying to make it into Guinness is an incredibly small but powerful moment.

What really makes KING OF KONG work, however, is how director Seth Gordon uses Steve’s attempt as an in to this world of competitive gaming. Or really, the world of the Donkey Kong world record. There’s the acknowledged champion, Billy Mitchell, his henchmen, Brian Kuh and Steve Sanders, and the king maker, Walter Day of Twin Galaxies, the official keeper of the records.

When Steve initially breaks Billy’s record, he becomes a local celebrity to ordinary folk, but the gaming world reacts differently. Even though Steve’s score was verified by Twin Galaxies’ official judge, Billy has an investigation launched into Steve’s machine, resulting in Brian Kuh taking Steve’s machine apart while Steve isn’t home and after his wife has told Kuh to stay away until Steve returns home. Kuh finds out that the board in Steve’s machine had been sent to him by one of Billy’s biggest enemies, something Steve wasn’t aware of, and so his quest to beat the record has seen him get involved in this old feud.

Steve just wants to play the game and take the record, so he starts attending live tournaments, something that Billy espouses throughout the film, even though he never once shows up to play at any of these tournaments. Steve’s arrival sends something of a shockwave through the event, as this guy none of the regulars had ever seen before is suddenly sitting in their midst, playing Donkey Kong.

Steve’s play gets the most attention from Billy’s henchman Kuh, who comes off as the biggest lackey in the film. A reprehensible sort who seems willing to do anything to covet favor with Billy, Kuh is continually on the phone with Billy to give him updates as to Steve’s progress. In his interviews with the filmmakers, Kuh comes off as whiny and jealous of Steve’s ability, constantly seeming to plead with the fates to trip Steve up. When Steve approaches the end of Donkey Kong, Kuh goes around Funspot to tell everyone that a Donkey Kong Kill Screen is about to come up. You could argue that Kuh is doing this because it’s an historic event, but it comes off more as Kuh’s attempt to ratchet up the pressure on Wiebe in the hopes that the Kill Screen never comes.

Mitchell’s other henchman, Steve Sanders, comes off much better. When there’s a tournament in Hollywood, Florida – the town where Billy lives – Sanders attends to check out Steve’s progress and game playing. At first he repeats Kuh’s actions, calling Billy to give him updates. Unlike Kuh, however, Sanders recognizes and respects Steve’s game-playing abilities. You can see it on his face as he watches Wiebe play that he’s legitimately impressed and when he talks to Steve and his family there’s a genuine respect for a fellow gamer and, more importantly, human being. Where Billy and Kuh simply view Steve as a threat, Sanders sees him as a person.

Billy comes off as a total manipulative, controlling, self-involved dickhead throughout the film, but nowhere is his true self revealed more than when Sanders tells the camera that he thinks Wiebe is an honest guy, a good person, and a terrific gamer. Billy sits next to him as Sanders relates this opinion with a look in his eye of disbelief and betrayal at what Steve is saying.

Apparently, Billy never learned that the way to make yourself look even better is to build your opponent up before crushing them, not denigrating them.

Walter Day is the keeper of the records, and he comes off as a nice guy who’s easily pushed around by Billy. When Steve breaks Billy’s record in front of a cheering crowd, Billy’s henchman Kuh submits a taped performance of Billy breaking the million point mark. Despite the tape being of questionable quality and containing enough questionable material that the official judge openly questions their presence, Walter is convinced by Billy that the tape is authentic and gives the world record back to Billy. (The tape will later be disqualified, but the film doesn’t get into this.)

The climax of the film sees Day called “Steve Weeb” up to the front of a tournament to get a special recognition. Steve finally tells Day that his last name is “Wee-bee,” and Walter apologizes, and then officially recognizes Steve’s abilities and tells him that Twin Galaxies would be happy to accept any future taped games he wants to submit because his skills have been proven to everyone in attendance.

Well, except for Billy, who shows up at the tournament long enough to do a walk through but not play or even engage Steve. Wiebe is playing Kong when Billy walks by and greets him, but Billy doesn’t acknowledge the greeting and instead says to his wife, “There’s certain people I don’t want to spend too much time with” as he passes behind Steve. It’s a dick move, completely classless and petty, but that’s apparently who Billy is, even beyond what the film actually shows. (Director Gordon has said there’s more evidence of Billy’s manipulativeness, but he showed only what he had to show to tell the story.)

By the end of the film I didn’t really care who had the world record (it’s now owned by neither Billy nor Steve, though both have held it since the film’s release), because I was happy to see that Steve had achieved some level of his potential. Being accepted by Walter Day, Steve Sanders, and a bulk of the arcade gaming world might not seem like a triumph of greatness, but it really comes across quite powerfully, and we see (and hopefully Steve sees) that whatever financial or personal success he might achieve, he is, at his core, a decent guy and that should matter more than any record.