Identity Thief

Title: Identity Thief

Director: Seth Gordon

Screenwriters: Craig Mazin, Jerry Eeten

Producers: Pamela Abdy, Jason Bateman, Scott Stuber.

Cast: Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy

Popcorn Movie Rating: 5

Money Almost Stolen by the Identity Thief

By: David Maldonado

This is a comedy that hardly makes you laugh and where happened so much things that it feels like the most disorganized movie ever.

Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) is an organized guy whom, in the first 30 seconds of movie, identity is stolen. There is a woman in Florida (Melissa McCarthy) that committed the crime and uses his credit cards to buy all kind of useless things. The debt is so high (and she even commit crime in his name), that the real Sandy is about to lose his new job unless he get her to confess her crimes and clean his name.

In the beginning the movie is horrible. Nothing that occurs makes sense. All the authorities’ figures are complete imbeciles. That, obviously, is the idea but, when a movie is impulse by a massive human stupidity, it loses its realism. Every movie needs to have a little of realism, because that is what makes the audience connect with the fictional characters. That doesn’t happen here because Sandy’s first boss is an imbecile, the officer that takes the case of identity robbery doesn’t care about the consequences of this crime and Sandy’s new boss doesn’t have any emotion because simply don’t understand the severity of the situation. So the big trouble is unjustified because there was a legal option better that the idea of Sandy taking a trip to Florida to take a criminal back to Colorado.

The movie’s second act is chaos. The male protagonist go and find the criminal, just to find out that she is in more trouble that he could imagine. Two other criminals are looking for her to kill her. That part of the story doesn’t have any use except to let the audience know that the protagonists are in danger. The problem is that both, Sandy and Diana don’t even know their lives are at risk. Like if taking a criminal from Florida to Colorado wasn’t hard enough, now they have to run from a couple of mad men trying to kill them. Who are those bad guys? You’ll never know.

The only respectable thing in the story is its finale. It ends in a realistic way for a change. Is incredible how a movie driven by something so unreal ends up in such a realistic way. In a way that is a relief, but if this was an unreal movie, then it should have ended in an unreal way. It is a good end and it works but, it doesn’t go with the movie style.

Melissa McCarthy performance is the highlight of the film. I’m not a fan of her and I think that making laugh by doing or saying something gross is easy. That kind of comedy is tawdry but, in this movie she has some emotional scenes where she proves that she actually is more than just bad jokes. This character allows her to do some decent performance, like crying and going serious at the same time with just two seconds of difference.

Jason Bateman is not a bad actor but, in this movie he makes the same character than in Couples Retreat, The Change Up and Horrible Bosses. It would be good that, for a change, he makes a character with a different personality. What he does well is comedy. He is natural in sarcasm, the perfect comeback line, knows where to put a big word to make you laugh and once in a while comes with something you didn’t see coming, like breaking a guitar in a woman’s face.

This is an R rated comedy but, it is not R rated like Bridesmaid or The Change Up. This is like a PG-13 movie that uses the F word once in a while so it makes it an R movie. What doesn’t have is constant comedy. There are constants situations in which you are suppose to laugh but you don’t in all of them and don’t burst of laughter even once.  It runs for almost two hours and even is not boring; you get to feel the 112 minutes length.

This is not a movie worth paying for. Maybe you will enjoy it if you go with a bunch of friends at start mocking the film instead of laughing at it.