Movie Review: “Identity Thief” Stole Two Hours From My Life

There are two things that the new movie “Identity Thief” is convinced are funny. 1. Teasing a man named “Sandy” because it’s a “girl’s name,” and 2. Punching someone in the neck (admittedly a phrase I use often because it sounds weird and funny, it doesn’t really “play” funny on screen more than once).

We know this because the movie repeats each of those gags (no pun intended on the latter case) not once or twice or three times, but throughout the entire film. I point this out because sometimes, when a comedy is plainly not funny, one starts to ask himself, “Gee, since I’m not laughing, what parts did they laugh at during the making of this mess?” Did they think it would be funny, even in a comedy, for a guy to be on the verge of losing his career while his wife is pregnant with their 3rd child?

Melissa McCarthy, an agile comedienne, and Jason Bateman, possessed with one of the best deadpan deliveries since Jack Benny, are dream co-stars caught in a nightmare. Meanness abounds, but precious few laughs. Bateman, as in the far superior “Horrible Bosses,” is once again a put-upon employee. A hard worker who deserves the big promotion but never gets it, only this time his sneering jerk of a boss is played by Jon Favreau instead of Kevin Spacey. And on top of everything else, this poor schlub discovers at the gas station that his identity has been stolen and his credit cards are no good. The first hint that the mean spirited approach will prevail is when the gas station attendant cuts his cards and berates him for “not paying his bills.”  Hahaha.

Let me give you some shortcuts: Bateman travels to Florida, where he discovers that another “Sandy Patterson” played by McCarthy is the culprit and she’s not the least bit sorry. In fact, when Bateman confronts her, she punches him in the neck, Hahahahaha.

Bateman catches her and intends to drive her back to his home in Colorado, to show to his boss and the police what has happened. This is the part where you realize you’re watching “Road Movie” bits that were much funnier in their previous incarnations. “Midnight Run” comes to mind, only because a bounty hunter (Robert Patrick) is also chasing down McCarthy. Also, every time Robert Patrick’s character shows up, music that was almost surely stolen from the “Midnight Run” soundtrack starts to play—the rip off is that blatant. (Side Note: Danny Elfman did the soundtrack for that 1988 film, using a lot of slide guitar cues-It wasn’t until the next year that Elfman, in his score for Batman, would start an endless list of movie scores that all sounded very much like, well, Danny Elfman).

The one part where I can honestly say I laughed out loud, was a scene in a diner where the waitress mistakes Bateman for a verbally abusive husband to McCarthy. Not that real verbal abuse is funny, only the fact that poor Bateman is so misunderstood.

Apart from that, it was just a waiting game for me. Waiting for the movie to produce what I call the “John Candy Reveal” from “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” Without spoiling that wonderful comedy, suffice to say that, at some point, that film needed to show more facets of Candy’s character, and it was quite a pay-off. In “Identity Thief,” the countdown to the reveal lasts way too long, and when it comes, is way too little, too late. It’s so lame that even the character jokes that it isn’t such a great revelation.

I suppose this movie wouldn’t have been as disappointing had it starred actors I didn’t know or care much about. You know that old phrase that goes something like, “That actor is so great, I’d pay to hear him read the phone book.” In this case, that saying is literally true…if the only other choice was to see them in this movie again.