“Oh dear God, sweet sweet freedom. After being snowbound at the Cave for over 85 hours, I finally ventured out into the world, where there were many snow piles taller than I am. I’ve never been so happy to be at the office, and I was in no hurry to get back home afterwards. Besides, I had movies to catch up on. I was aiming for an early showing of Side Effects, but with the T still not being quite up to speed yet, the delays got me there in better time for Identity Thief. For the first time in a while I grabbed a Happy Meal from Mickey D’s on the way in and stashed it in my bag for a stealth dinner. I’d planned to try and be inconspicuous and maybe hide in a higher row than usual, trying not to be “”that guy”” with the odorous outside food, obviously breaking the rules. But as I scanned for a seat, I saw people in the second row blatantly eating cheeseburgers (not an AMC offering), so I took that as my cue to just take my usual front row seat. Manners be damned. As soon as I situated myself, someone else walked in with a bag marked with those recognizable golden arches. Alrighty then.
Not gonna lie. The premise for Identity Thief sounds incredibly dumb. And it was. It’s what I think of as a “”nightmare movie””. The characters are stuck in an impossible situation that keeps getting worse and worse and it should have had an easy solution (such as simply walking away) but instead they dig themselves deeper. It feels like you’re in a nightmare you can’t wake up from. However, the reason to watch this was our duo Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy. McCarthy is one of the freshest and in demand names in comedy right now, and this is her first starring role after her Bridesmaids break out. Bateman is dependable whenever you need a lovable straight man to play off of.
The two were kinda captivating for a while. Sure the plot was flimsy, but you just needed something to build their antics around. And I did appreciate that since it was R rated they could take some risque risks with their comedy. But after about an hour, I was pretty much done. The nightmare got deeper and deeper. There were too many people chasing them. Plausibility was not only out the window, but it was run over, thrown into a dumpster, picked out of the dumpster by a homeless man, and carried off to his home in an underpass where a racoon made a meal of it.
There really isn’t much else to say about it. What you see in the trailer is what you get on film. If you want those two minutes expanded into two hours, go for it. For me, the whole thing wore out pretty quick.
Identity Thief – \m/ \m/ \n