Cedar Rapids
Director: Miguel Arteta
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 2.5
A small-town insurance agent (Ed Helms) gets sent to the "big city" (a hotel in Iowa) for an insurance convention where he learns all about promiscuity, prostitution, drug use, infidelity, alcoholism and deception. (In other words, he goes to college for grown-ups.) Though at its heart it's just another predictable fish-out-of-water story, the real treat here is watching its cast work with its crass language, particularly John C. Reilly's privately tortured/publically boisterous pottymouth and Alia Shawkat's unrepentant hooker. It gets a bit tiring seeing Helms get slapped around and humiliated constantly - as if The Hangover will be his career downfall and permanently cast him as a whipping boy - though the digs at Midwestern moral hypocrisy are fun.
