Identity Thief [Celluloid Hero]

Identity Thief (2013)

I was warned about this movie ahead of time by my fiancee. Despite the warning, I went ahead and watched it. She and I usually have opposing taste in movies, so I figured there was a decent chance that I would like it even though she didn't. In this case, she was totally right.

Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) is an upper-middle-class businessman, working an office job for a jerk boss, going home to two kids and a wife expecting a third. A small group of coworkers decide to quit and start their own company, and invite Sandy along. Just as things are looking good, his world falls apart. Melissa McCarthy plays "Diana", the titular thief of identities. She's a caricature of white trashiness, wearing bright colored and loud patterned clothing, poofy hair, and garish makeup. She fakes identities to use credit on tasteless tacky material goods, filling her house with whatever she can rack up before the victim catches on.

Sandy runs the risk of losing his job due to bad credit, and the police say they have no case because he lives in Colorado while the thief lives in Florida. Sandy takes it upon himself to go to Florida to catch Diana and bring her back to justice. None of this makes sense to me. I understand that the police have more important cases, but even if they say it will take six months to a year to clear up, why would his new employers (made up of coworkers who specifically chose him due to his professionalism) give him the ultimatum? It's not like this movie tried to make the claim that it takes place a few years in the past when "identity theft" was something no one had heard of.

There is also a stupid subplot involving drug dealers and a bounty hunter. Apparently Diana sold bad phony credit cards to the drug dealers, so now they're out to get revenge. The bounty hunter is tailing her because she skipped out on a court date, or an outstanding warrant, or some other thing that I've already forgotten.

The main problem I had is that Diana was a completely unlikeable character. She is obviously the "villain" to begin with; there are blatant setups to make the audience start to feel pity for her, but no matter what they tried, I still found her to be awful.

I love Jason Bateman, and Melissa McCarthy was good in "Bridesmaids", so I thought there would be good potential for the two of them to make good comedy. Comedies work best when I actually laugh, and I think my laugh total was somewhere in the single digits.