LEAST KNOWN of Anne Heche’s alter egos is an as-yet-unnamed screwball comedian, a Jean Arthur spirit. Heche has made wonderful copy offscreen, outcrazying very stiff competition in Southern California.
Still, as three separate family memoirs by the Heches make clear, it was in the God-fearing Midwest that the trouble began. And the new film Cedar Rapids is all about how deranged the Midwest can be.
With long, glossy red hair and a fiery wardrobe, Heche plays Joan Ostrowski-Fox, an insurance saleswoman. The highlight of her sedate year is the annual convention in that Iowa city of 120,000. It’s her time to cut loose. When she’s prissily accused of being “a philanderer,” Joan flashes a weary look and makes a slow upward wave of the hand: What are you going to do?
Miguel Arteta’s comedy shares Foxy’s worldly viewpoint in favor of the pleasures of the flesh. Based on a robust script by Phil Johnston, Cedar Rapids shows us some captivating alliances during the course of the convention.
Ed Helms, the Larry Fine among the three stooges of The Hangover, is the film’s actual hero. He plays Tim Lippe, a salesman from the BrownStar Insurance Company of Brown Valley, Wis. His ogre of a boss sends him as an alternate delegate after a far more proactive salesman meets with an accident.
The Best Westernish business hotel looks like Xanadu to Tim, who has never left his hometown. His backwardness is demonstrated by his affair with his former sixth-grade teacher, Macy, played with bawdy grace by Sigourney Weaver. (“Did you have a crush on me, too?” he asks her in bed. “You were 12,” she replies.)
Tim’s only regret is that Macy couldn’t join him on the exciting trip. But he’s distracted by meeting his new roommates: Ronald (ACT vet Isiah Whitlock Jr.) and the life of the convention, Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly).
When Ziegler turns up, slapping backs and roaring (“You got any honey on your stinger yet?”), it’s clear that the joke about “BrownStar” isn’t going to be the only hint of anality in the film. Reilly, who seemed at first to be headed for Rod Steiger roles, did a 180-degree turn to become one fantastically adept comedian (Walk Hard; Step Brothers).
His Dean is a rare example of a coarse jackass who brings hilarity to every gesture, every unprintable under-the-breath comment. Reilly is so beautifully obscene, tilting his low forehead, standing, paunchy and boxer-short-clad, delivering a late-night speech about how a businessman has to “dance with the tiger.” As Rooster Cogburn’s ex-wife said of the marshal, the love of decency does not dwell in him.
Ziegler, however, is not monotonous. During a night of drinking, he snaps into lucidity to give Tim some important advice. The small-town naif needs to know that the convention is not on the level and that the churchly head of the organization (Kurtwood Smith) is hardly as pious as he seems.
Cedar Rapids celebrates Tim’s good luck in getting the help of the gentle Ronald, the profane, loyal Dean and the sworn-to-fun Joan, who has more going on under her surface. The sweetness and melancholy of her life are indicated through her theme music, an old tune by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
Cedar Rapids is not perfect. It looks roughly edited during a scavenger-hunt scene. The coming attractions are just as roughly edited; they don’t give a hint of the comedic rhythms of the film. And it tries to get away with a kind of small-business-triumphant ending that we can barely accept in Frank Capra movies.
But Cedar Rapids is ultimately humane, always diverting and consistently ticklish. Just remembering Joan swimming up to Tim in the hotel pool like an anaconda gliding toward a floating baby bird, or Reilly’s Dean popping his eyes as he says something terrible, can make you really feel good about things.
R; 86 min.
