Cedar Rapids Review: From Iowa With Love

Before I write a single thing about the movie Cedar Rapids I should make abundantly clear that Iowa is where I call home. It is not a mecca of metropolitan glamour. Nor is it an exotic getaway from anywhere (other than maybe North Dakota) but it is where I grew up and where most of my family still resides. And although I don’t ever see myself returning to Iowa for any extended period of time, I’ll still proudly wave the flag claiming it as my own until the day I die.

I therefore approach any movie set in Iowa or other nearby parts of the Midwest with mild trepidation. Will they find the legitimate humor in the life and people there, like director Alexander Payne does so well in movies like About Schmidt and Election? Or will they merely make us out to be clueless hicks with little or no insight into what actually makes people of the Midwest tick? I’m looking at you, Drop Dead Gorgeous.

With that in mind I am happy to report that Cedar Rapids falls more in the Alexander Payne category… only not nearly as nuanced, funny, or touching. In telling the story of Tim Lippe (Ed Helms), an insurance salesman from Wisconsin who travels to the “big city” of Cedar Rapids, Iowa for an important conference, Cedar Rapids doesn’t so much skewer Iowa as much as it makes it a veritable playground for the sad group of characters who converge there (all from out of state) to act out their desires and forget the sorrow of their normal lives back home.

Our protagonist, Tim, could best be described as a man-child. Living a somewhat lonely existence, Tim has recently latched onto his old seventh grade teacher (Sigourney Weaver) who is using him for sex and quite obviously nothing more. He fails to pick up on this fact and considers the two of them pre-engaged. It’s like when one of your friends is really excited about a new love interest and is convinced that he or she is ‘the one’, but then you finally meet this person and can immediately see they have little to no interest in a future with your friend. Its awkward and heartbreaking at the same time but that is also probably how you could describe Tim’s life up until this point.

Tim finally gets a chance to step up to the plate when his hero coworker dies during a strange sex act and Tim is selected to take his place at an annual insurance industry conference in Cedar Rapids where his firm is vying for its fourth consecutive Two Diamonds trophy for Central Midwest Insurance Provider of the Year. Or something like that. As part of this, the clueless Tim gets to take his first flight on an airplane after being wonderfully shocked that he still has to go through security despite personally knowing the TSA agent at his small regional airport. He must also face the eventual “rigmarole” of checking into his hotel in Cedar Rapids by reluctantly allowing the hotel personnel to swipe his credit card. It’s clearly a different world for Tim but he prepares by wearing his wallet as a money belt under his shirt. Safety first, of course.

At the hotel, Tim shares a junior suite with Ronald (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), a single, workaholic, The Wire fan and Dean/Deanzo (John C. Reilly) a foul-mouthed, recently divorced, brash, party animal. Both men are veterans of the Cedar Rapids conference and hope to show Tim the ropes. They also introduce him to Joan (Anne Heche) who is an unhappily married mother from Omaha, Nebraska looking for a brief escape from family life and responsibility. Together, the four characters get sloppy drunk and try to wash away their normal lives by turning Cedar Rapids into their own personal Las Vegas. Anything goes and everything does.

Over the course of the conference Tim experiences things that he’s never even considered before like shots, drunken sex, and doing drugs with a hooker played by Arrested Development‘s Alia Shawkat. But he also learns how to stand up for himself and his principals when it turns out that earning the Two Diamonds trophy isn’t just about making a snazzy presentation. In short, you could say he learns to become a real adult throughout his journey to Iowa and it was a nice dose of reality that he definitely needed. Unfortunately though, these life lessons come off almost as half-handedly as I’ve described them here and therefore fail to resonate with any genuine feeling or emotion.

Ed Helms is perfectly fine in the role of Tim, but it is written so overly daft that it often comes off as unbelievable that anyone could be so out of touch. There are certainly parts that ring true but it’s ultimately overdone and at times brings the movie down to simple gross-out comedy territory. The rest of the cast is quite good in their roles including Reilly (as always) and Anne Heche who actually surprised me with a really likable performance. She has officially earned her removal from the “Isn’t She Just a Crazy Person” List.

Ultimately this is a film that had potential but was content in staying at standard comedy levels instead of breaking new ground. You will certainly laugh throughout the entire picture but you probably won’t be giggling when you think back on it in the hours and days following. And you certainly aren’t likely to remember it a year from now when it slowly blends in with all of the other generic comedy films that you’ve watched over the years. So at best I’d say its worth viewing at home when you have relatively few options but there’s no need to race out to the theatre now.

And you might ask- how did Iowa fare in this depiction? Pretty well, actually. Cedar Rapids is not shown to be particularly picturesque or classy but there are nods to Iowa’s relatively progressive legalization of gay marriage and everyone in the movie seems pretty pleased to be there, which is a step in the right direction! In many ways, Cedar Rapids, Iowa becomes a little slice of heaven for the characters involved and we can see they’re already anticipating their return next year for another escape from their dull and slightly troubled lives. And although I won’t be joining them there anytime soon, I support it and wish them well. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go pound some shots of Cream Sherry.

Grade: B-

Images courtesy of IMDb.