I went into this movie expecting a lot. From the previews I had seen it looked funnier than hell and I was expecting a raucous, raunchy 'let's corrupt the vanilla insurance agent' type of a comedy that would keep the laughs coming non-stop and have more than it's requisite share of dick and boob jokes. In the end, I was almost disappointed but still pleasantly surprised- because what you think will be a raunchy laugh riot turns out to be a raunchy, sort of sweet coming of the age comedy that is a ton and a half of entertaining fun.
The story revolves around Tim (Ed Helms) the naive, nice guy Boy Scout insurance agent who loves his job does a decent job at it, hooks up with an older woman- his newly divorced ex-teacher Macy (Sigourney Weaver) and generally has a pretty average life. When the superstar insurance agent at their firm Roger Lemke (Thomas Lennon) dies due to auto-erotic asphyixiation, Tim's Boss, Bill (Stephen Root) decides to send him to the big insurance convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to see if they can snag another of the coveted Two Diamond Awards that Tim's agency has won for three years running now.
Once Tim arrives in Cedar Rapids, things start to go downhill for him. First he meets his two roommates, Ronald (Isiah Whitlock) and Dean (John C. Reilly) who immediately set about to try and corrupt his naive ways and after some initial rough patches, Tim soon fits right in, making friends with a prostitute that works in front of the hotel (Alia Shawkat) and engaging in increasing amounts of flirtation with the female member of their happy little band, Joan (played by the very lovely Anne Heche). The sexual tension between Joan and Tim eventually reaches a peak after a night of drunken debauchery and they have sex...
In short, Tim quickly loses his innocence, his girlfriend, his inhibitions about drinking and doing drugs and soon discovers the shady underside of the insurance business- but realizes that he has the time and the talents to succed on his own merits and with the help of his new found friends, does exactly that.
Like I said, this movie wasn't what I was expecting but it was still a good movie overall. John C. Reilly steals the show as the hilariously raunchy Dean Ziegler and Ed Helms manages to bring a sense of dorky naivety to the proceedings that adds a healthy amount of heart to the movie. The movie itself gentley pokes fun at the somewhat vanilla nature of the Midwest (witness the moment where Ed Helms meets his African-American roommate Ronald- probably the first African-American his character has ever met) but overall remains true to its coming of age-finding yourself-raunchy-sexy-comedy thing.
If I have one gripe about this movie, it's that the vast majority of it wasn't actually filmed in Cedar Rapids. There are tantalizing glimpses of the City of Five Seasons here and there but they're few and far between and a quick check of Wikipedia reveals that the movie was actually filmed in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I get that the lack of a film tax credit is what prompted the decision on the part of the filmmakers, but in a city still recovering from the Floods of 2008 (which get a shout-out courtesy of Ed Helms at one point in the movie) the publicity could have been a real economic boost for them. But that's a small gripe, as gripes go.
Overall ***out of 4: Adjust your expectations a bit and what you have is a raunchy, funny, sweet, entertaining coming-of-age-finding-yourself-getting crazy story about insurance agents. It sounds like it should be boring as all git out, yet surprisingly, it's hilarious.
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