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Created Feb 21, 2011 12:57PM PST • Edited Mar 29, 2023 11:52PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Cedar Rapids keeps its ambitions in check and easily exceeds them. A gut-bustingly funny story about Ed Helms’ rural Cheesehead taking his first airplane trip to the Gotham of the title, it needn’t venture far from home to harvest a bumper crop of universally identifiable storylines.

   Did I mention that it’s exceptionally funny? Nearly 50% LOL, plus a few more if your sense of propriety is low enough. Raunchy funny, really raunchy on several occasions. Be warned.

   Think of a cross between The Hangover and The 40 Year Old Virgin. The former also stars Ed Helms, only here the roadtrip is workaday, the buddies mainstream, even if the situations end up damn near as extreme. The latter brings to mind the rich comedy to be mined by placing a preternaturally naive man in a series of salacious situations. Also like both those movies, this one slays, comedically speaking.

   Featuring eight great performances, including from John C. Reilly, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Anne Heche to go with that of Helms, Cedar Rapids has ample fire power to deliver on Phil Johnston’s brilliant screenplay and Miguel Arteta’s deft direction.

   Fans of comedy and great American filmmaking will find Cedar Rapids a trip worth taking.

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   Current Event Note
   Wisconsin – quintessentially mid-American – all of a sudden occupies the middle of my American consciousness. First Aaron Rogers quarterbacks the Packers to a Super Bowl win, then the public employee unions storm Madison while their indentured servants in the Senate hightail it to Illinois all the while claiming Democracy in Action, and now we have a brilliantly funny comedy about a Cheesehead who uses old fashioned Badger State virtue to come out on top.

   On, Wisconsin! Hail thee, good, great, and hypocritical – in the case of the Union Democrats.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   A killer quartet of actors anchor the movie:

   • Ed Helms, of course, in a performance of near Carellian proportions.
   • John C. Reilly as an asshole so perfect he becomes likable. It helps that his “Deanzie” delivers a sidesplitting speech in his boxer shorts and more than a few LOL bombs.
   • Isiah Whitlock Jr. as the best guy anybody could hope to meet: as a roommate, in a crisis, in business. A star of The Wire, he makes some funny allusions to his more well known employer.
   • Anne Heche as a girl Friday with her eyes set on Helms. Heche is an unappreciated screen queen. Smart & beautiful. Wow. So what if she’s wacky in real life.

   Accomplished thespians surround them, four of whom jump off the screen:

   • Sigourney Weaver as a GrandMILF.
   • Alia Shawkat as a crank whore…with a heart of gold, of course. Her pornographic love offer to Helms is one of the movie’s jaw droppingly blue laugh lines.
   • Stephen Root as a soulless figurehead.
   • Kurtwood Smith as a corrupt moralist.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    All hail director Miguel Arteta and writer Phil Johnston for crafting this comedic gem. While Johnston has seemingly come out of nowhere, Arteta’s Youth in Revolt produced one of 09’s funniest trailers.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    Arteta gets more out of a garden variety cookie-cutter hotel than its soulless architecture has any right to give. From the winding atrium ramps to the highly visible tryst in the pool to the claustrophobic workout room, he elevates every setting for maximum comedic impact without stooping to cliche or arrogance.

12. Play Great 4.0

    Johnston’s screenplay brilliantly nails so many current trends, it’s like a target rich environment of the current American condition.

    • Sexually assured women who have long since stopped looking for someone to take care of them.
    • The common self-centeredness between those who traffic in morality and those who abjure it. Cedar Rapids lauds the latter and relishes bringing down the former, thus declaring itself more Hollywood than heartland.
    • Meth culture’s strong incursion into rural America.

    Did he have to go so blue in his jokes? Maybe not, but funny trumps all. And he’s got the funnies in spades.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.8

    Nasty blue … hell, let’s just call it what it is: misogynisticly funny. If Anne Heche – once betrothed to Ellen DeGeneres – can go along when her fearless foursome crashes a wedding party of “rug munchers” (think “two brides”), the coast seems clear for we in the viewing audience to get in touch with our inner pig.

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Fierce 1.8

19. Rudeness Nasty 4.0

21. Reality

    Glib 1.7

    Travel on business? You’ll recognize much in Cedar Rapids, especially if you go to the occasional conference. The mix of business and pleasure, the cheesy surrounds, the panoply of good and bad colleagues, it’s all here. Only thing I’ve never seen is a working girl outside the hotel. Thank goodness.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.1

23. Biological Glib 1.9

24. Physical Natural 1.0