Cedar Rapids is a fish-out-of-water story about a wholesome small town man corrupted by a business trip to the big city. The joke here is that the "big city" is Cedar Rapids, Iowa and the bacchanalian business trip is an insurance conference. So drinking all those tiny bottles of liquor the hotel provides you in the little refrigerator is what passes for the height of debauchery.
Ed Helms plays Tim Lippe, a guy in his mid-to-late thirties who has spent his whole life in Brown Valley, Wisconsin working as an insurance agent at Brown Star Insurance. Although he is not unlike Steve Carrell's character Andy from The 40 Year Old Virgin, Tim is no innocent: he's sleeping with his former elementary school teacher, Macy Vanderhei (played by Sigourney Weaver), whom he accidentally keeps calling "Mrs. Vanderhei". Tim's life of ribald excitement is interrupted when his boss comes to him with a huge favor: will Tim attend the annual midwestern insurance convention and hopefully claim the prestigious "Two Diamond" award for Brown Star Insurance for the fourth year in a row? It's an emergency situation, see, because the Brown Star Insurance rock star, Trent, who normally attended the convention and won all the previous Two Diamond awards died (naked, with a belt looped around his neck. Naive Tim doesn't get what's so controversial about this. Apparently, he's never been on the Internet before).Anyway, wide-eyed Tim takes on the responsibility and heads to Cedar Rapids for a long weekend that changes his life. He meets up with crude party animal Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), "just one of the boys" Joan Ostrowski-Fox (Anne Heche), and mild-mannered token black guy with a fondness for "the HBO program The Wire" Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock Jr.). This wacky group helps Tim through his first time getting drunk, skinny dipping in a hotel pool, accidentally smoking meth (or crack? I couldn't tell), and sleeping with a married woman. Let's just say it's a full weekend for Tim.
But the point of the film is that even so-called degenerates who imbibe illegal substances, get wasted, and sleep around can be good people...and, conversely, that so-called upstanding citizens with Christian values can be corrupt and manipulative, as Tim realizes when he uncovers massive-ish fraud at the convention. It's a lesson most people eventually learn--Tim just learns it a little later in life.
Although Cedar Rapids has its moments of hilarity (my favorite scene is when drunk Tim takes a woman to his hotel room, kisses her, and excitedly yells "I WANNA MAKE LOVE!"), it's not nearly at the level of a film it borrows heavily from, The 40 Year Old Virgin. I feel that at this point we've seen this story done many times over: man-child is taken under the wing of cruder, ruder peers, learns how to party, but also learns some heart-warming life lessons. This is pretty much Judd Apatow's entire oeuvre. The film is funny, but it doesn't bring anything new to the table. And in fact, many of the poop and penis jokes are phoned in (case in point: during a hot dog eating contest, Tim tells Joan "You look really good with a wiener in your mouth". Ha HA. That joke was so funny when I was in 5th grade). Cedar Rapids is good for a couple hours of mindless entertainment, and Ed Helms is undeniably charming in the lead role, but this is a movie to get at Red Box, not one to pay out the nose to see in theatres (which I did).
3.5 out of 5 stars
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