Review: "Cedar Rapids"

I think my lasting impression of Ed Helms will not be as toothless Stu Price from “The Hangover”. It will be this one moment during Season 3 of “The Office” when his character, Andy Bernard, angrily (and literally) punches a hole into the office wall, to which he calmly replies: “That was an overreaction.”

And I’m certain that is why seeing him in this year’s new salesmen satire “Cedar Rapids” is actually quite refreshing. Rather than playing a sycophantic office drone or a whipped dental hygienist, Helms takes us one step further into the well-trod realm of the man-children.

What are man-children, you might ask?

Definition, according to the noted pundits at Urban Dictionary---noun, plural (‘child’—singular): “a grown man who is very immature, therefore considered a man-child.”

It’s a legacy whose roots can be traced as far back as Jerry Lewis. Perhaps even to Lou Costello. I know that Larry, Moe and Curly (yeah, Shemp too) are somewhere to be found in there. Regardless, whomever the progenitors were, there have been numerous performances in the worthy tradition of man-children ever since; like Bill Murray’s gopher-cidal Carl Spackler in “Caddyshack” or Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore in…well… “Happy Gilmore”. Other notable alumni of this manic genre include Jim Carrey, Chris Farley and the big cheese himself: John Belushi. Pretty much the entire canon of both Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell might be encompassed by this dynamic of aged buffoonery.

And herein lies the arena upon which Mr. Helms has made his debut as leading man.

In “Cedar Rapids”, Helms plays Tim Lippe, a credulous insurance agent from a small Midwestern town where scarcity of optimism is a thing unheard of. He’s about as threatening as a puppy trying to walk down stairs. So when he’s assigned to fill the shoes of BrownStar Insurance’s number one sales rep (who has chosen to auto-erotically asphyxiate) at the annual ASMI convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, you can imagine that things might not go as planned.

Once he touches down in the City of Five Seasons it’s a fevered pattern of garden-variety homo-erotic tension, rude awakenings and a boy-meets-girl-for-a-one-night-stand scenario that was made in Hollywood heaven. All while Lippe finds his proverbial wings somewhere in between.

There’s the naughty-or-nice mother looking to cut loose (in a left-fielded turn by Anne Heche), the acronym-spouting by-the-booker (Whitlock) who is an absolute devotee to HBO’s “The Wire” and a hooker who affectionately refers to Lippe as ‘butterscotch’. And while the story hones in on Lippe’s coming of age, another man-child flies cover in the form of veteran goofball John C. Reilly, who plays the boorish rival agent bunking with Lippe for the convention (e.g. the loud-mouthed friend who never lets you down).

But before I pigeonhole this film any further I should announce that director Miguel Arteta has an ace in the hole. And in that hole is Helms.

As dirty as that might sound, Helms portrayal of a naïve yet believably vulnerable man-child is what separates this flick from the competition. And that is what I like about Helms. We saw a bit of this creeping to the surface in “The Hangover” but we never really got the time to watch it develop.

Here, Helms coaxes his weepy, clumsy, kooky persona to perfection. There’s a sincerity to his approach that his contemporaries (perhaps save Carrell) have managed to miss all the while.

A fashionable MO might dictate an unending slew of gross-outs, one-liners and borderline psychotic tantrums but Helms resists the vogue and in so doing offers up his heart rather than his heiney.

Like when Lippe offers a promise ring to his old seventh-grade heartthrob (incidentally, his seventh grade biology teacher), for a moment, just a moment, the adolescent gleam in his eye brings both understanding and an embarrassed albeit charmed laugh. And the best part is that you don’t feel cheated into feeling something either.

I could hardly find myself being so enamored with Ferrell’s constant screeching.

And from the details like small-town airport security to the corporate team-building exercises, there is a vague sense of humor that seems to have sprung from the mind of an insider. The ‘low-tech’ nature of the antics similarly leaves you feeling more tender and true than tongue-in-cheek. You sprinkle that with an assortment of cameos and character actors and what you get is a Sundance favorite.

So love em or hate em, the invasion is over. The man-children have landed and they are here to stay. I’m just happy to report that Mr. Helms appears to be on our side.

***

Directed by:
Miguel Arteta

Written by:
Phil Johnston

Produced by:
Brian Bell
Jim Burke
Ed Helms
Alexander Payne
Jim Taylor

Cast:
Ed Helms ... Tim Lippe
John C. Reilly ... Dean Ziegler
Anne Heche ... Joan Ostrowski-Fox
Isiah Whitlock Jr. ... Ronald Wilkes
Stephen Root ... Bill Krogstad
Kurtwood Smith ... Orin Helgesson
Alia Shawkat ... Bree