Big Screen Peter: Cedar Rapids

Editor’s note: Peter Lewis has agreed to use whatever it is you call his writing style to provide some measure of analysis to those folks who still go to a theater to see a movie.

review by Peter Lewis

“Cedar Rapids” is a new independent comedy starring Ed Helms (The Office, The Hangover) as Tim Lippe and directed by Miguel Arteta (Youth in Revolt).

The story is in a classic mold: young, unassuming man thrust into harrowing circumstances and somehow manages to best the evilness that seemed destined to fell him. In short, it’s a coming of age tale. But while most of these tales occur on an epic scale, Cedar Rapids focuses on a seemingly inane reality: an insurance convention.

Helms plays Tim Lippe, a naïve insurance salesman thrust into the glaring lights of a midwest region insurance convention after a seemingly perfect colleague dies in an auto-erotic asphyxiation accident. Never having left his small town in Wisconsin, the sights and sounds of Cedar Rapids seem otherworldly.

Though arriving with strict instructions as to what he should be doing and with whom he should be fraternizing, Lippe soon slips into an abyss of misfortune through the influence of Dean Ziegler (played wonderfully by John C. Reilly).

As the innocence-killing foil to Lippe, Reilly excels. Unlike many so-called comedic actors, Reilly doesn’t rely on the artifice of non-sequitur or absurdity. He’s a master in delivery and intonation. He’s tailor-made for his role as the “Deansie,” a gruff, but honest braggadocio.For him, life isn’t about bending over backwards for people just to get rammed. To him, if you’re gonna get rammed, you might has well have it on your own terms. So when others fawn, he’s ribald.

The social realities of a mass of people converging upon one place just once a year is an intriguing perspective. In many ways, the life of a convention is like a vacuum and Arteta does a wonderful job illustrating that aspect. Some come for excitement and escape, others are pure business, but all wear a skin to both protect and to connect.

In many ways the film is a broad critique on societal mores, with Lippe’s optimism and Ziegler’s sarcasm both exposing the inherent hypocrisies in the world around them.

Ziegler makes no bones about disparaging the status of the hallowed Two Diamonds award and the lengths for which Lippe and many of his convention colleagues will go for the award. Round and round they seemed to run, chasing after an illusive goal.

From our perspective, the empty award amounts to nothing, but it gives their broken existences a focus. Life is never as bad as it could be when one has a purpose. Lippe lost that golden ring, but found it once more as his eyes opened up to the world.  Instead of focusing on the gutter, he looked up and saw the world for what it was: filled with possibility.

Cedar Rapids is far from perfect, but it’s refreshing to see a comedy that is both funny and purposeful.

• Cedar Rapids is not yet playing in the Fort Smith area.

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