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<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 After its first act, \u201cIdentity Thief\u201d becomes a predictable, mildly amusing road trip comedy. This is actually a really good creative decision because the film is effectively cutting its losses after realizing that it can\u2019t keep milking laughs from identity theft. I can accept that it\u2019s supposed to be funny to see Melissa McCarthy\u2019s con artist \u201cDiana\u201d paint the town red with ill-gotten funds. But I simply cannot buy into the humor involving Jason Bateman\u2019s hapless victim Sandy Patterson. Granted, not everything about his ruin is played for laughs, but it isn\u2019t funny to see him constantly treated with rudeness and incompetence by people who think he\u2019s a loser. Nor is it funny to see people make fun of him for having the name Sandy, a gag that is used liberally even after the worst is over.<\/p>\n\u201cDiana\u201d ruins Sandy\u2019s life with her scheme, affecting everything from his credit to his career to his personal reputation. This is coming at a horrible time for Sandy, as he and his wife (Amanda Peet) are soon expecting their third child. The police are portrayed as powerless, so Sandy heads to Florida to try and coax \u201cDiana\u201d into traveling with him back to Denver to confess. She\u2019s understandably resistant (in the form of a punch to the throat), but leaving town with an escort might protect her from violent retaliation from more bloodthirsty victims. Even with her relative cooperation, \u201cDiana\u201d isn\u2019t an ideal travel companion. Her obnoxiousness and disobedience promise to drive Sandy crazy, as if he weren\u2019t already at his breaking point over the identity theft.<\/p>\n
The pair\u2019s adventures include eluding gangsters (Genesis Rodriguez and T.I., in the film solely to appear in trailers) and a bounty hunter (Robert Patrick, in the film for reasons undetermined), multiple fights and car crashes, a snake attack, and an identity theft scam of their own against Sandy\u2019s former boss (Jon Favreau, in the film for a total of one scene). The most notable detour is a romantic rendezvous with a southern-friend real estate agent (Eric Stonestreet). It\u2019s a gross scene, but I laughed, and I\u2019d rather watch it again than that horrific GoDaddy ad from the Super Bowl. Eventually we see a more sympathetic side to \u201cDiana\u201d and Sandy struggles with the decision whether or not to turn her in.<\/p>\n
The humor is the standard R-rated comedy fare. Profanity and sexual references are thrown around a lot. McCarthy, to her credit, throws her back into more than her fair share of physical gags. Several jokes are made at the expense of \u201cDiana\u2019s\u201d weight and appearance. One gag that\u2019s used quite often is one where \u201cDiana\u201d tells a stranger a wild story about Sandy (usually involving his genitalia) and Sandy tries to deny it, but the stranger doesn\u2019t believe him. These gags are supposed to tell us that \u201cDiana\u201d is good at lying and Sandy is bad at defending himself, but really they just tell us that the strangers doing the judging are stupid.<\/p>\n
Bateman\u2019s character is a square and the script is even flatter than you probably expect. So your opinion of \u201cIdentity Thief\u201d boils down to how much you can laugh at Melissa McCarthy. For many people, that\u2019s a lot. She earned an Oscar nomination last year for \u201cBridesmaids\u201d, a rarity for such a vulgar comedy. I\u2019ll admit that she\u2019s easily the best thing about this movie, even if she does often resort to crass clich\u00e9s. That isn\u2019t to say that she \u201csaves\u201d the film by any means. At best, \u201cIdentity Thief\u201d is a mostly-mediocre comedy, at worst it\u2019s an instruction manual for future identity thieves.<\/p>\n
One and a Half Stars out of Five.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdentity Thief\u201d is rated R for sexual content and language. Its running time is 112 minutes.<\/p>\n